Summary Ministers from the 28-member EU pledged action on the problem of soaring youth unemployment.
BERLIN (AFP) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel is due in Paris next week for EU talks on tackling mass youth unemployment in the bloc, her spokesman said Friday.
Merkel will be received at the Elysee presidential palace, Steffen Seibert told reporters, adding the meeting was a follow-up to a July summit in Berlin on helping Europe s millions of jobless under 25-year-olds.
Labour Minister Ursula von der Leyen will accompany Merkel, he said, describing the Paris meeting as a "first stock-taking" of decisions from the initial summit and that action would continue.
Heads of state and government, EU chiefs as well as labour ministers from the 28-member EU pledged action on the problem of soaring youth unemployment in July when Merkel told reporters "we want to put ourselves under a bit of pressure".
In some particularly badly hit EU countries, around 60 percent of under 25-year-olds have found themselves out of work.
The Berlin meeting focused on training, giving small and medium-sized companies access to affordable credit, mobility of young people to find work and better use of available European funds.
Seibert said that Paris and Berlin were working "together to draw the right lessons from the crisis" and had long shown "a wide degree of cooperation" on European topics.
