The European Parliament adopted by 592 votes to 42, with 57 abstentions, a resolution on the impact of COVID-19 on youth and on sport.

Sport is an important economic sector that accounts for 2.12 % of total GDP and 2.72 % of total employment in the EU and represents an estimated 5.67 million jobs.

Both sport and youth work activities in all their diversity are at particular risk throughout Europe due to the pandemic, which is resulting in the shrinking of civic space. Therefore, this resolution called for measures to be taken to preserve structures and ensure diversity of supply in the fields of youth and sport.

Youth

Regarding youth in particular, Parliament stressed the particularly acute impact the current pandemic has had on young people not in education, employment, or training (NEETs) and highlighted the need to tackle the problems faced by young people from vulnerable groups.

Labour-intensive sectors often characterised by low pay, such as wholesale and retail, accommodation, tourism and food services, which typically employ low-skilled young workers and working students, have been most dramatically affected by the pandemic. Youth unemployment and poverty have risen steadily since the outbreak of the pandemic.

The Commission and the Member States are urged to:

- take all the necessary measures to counter the disastrous effects on youth employment, including through macroeconomic (fiscal and monetary) policies that direct public expenditure towards the provision of subsidies for recruitment or youth guarantees in support of tailored schemes for job retention and creation and for the upskilling and reskilling of young people;

- increase investment in digital solutions and literacy for the development of practical skills, competences and qualifications, to make access to digital literacy available to all, and to promote the development of independent, multilingual, inclusive and free online learning tools in order to improve the overall level of digital skills and competences as part of the implementation of the Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027);

- mobilise sectoral programmes that have a direct focus on youth, such as Erasmus+, the European Solidarity Corps, the Youth Guarantee and the Child Guarantee, or that have the potential to support the transition towards a fairer and more socially and environmentally sustainable Europe.

The resolution highlighted that the COVID-19 crisis has increased anxiety and fear among young people, which risks having a considerable impact on their lives and their school-to-work transition. The pandemic has had a detrimental effect on young people with disabilities and young people living in rural and remote areas. The Commission and the Member States should pay particular attention to the needs of this group by adapting the available support measures and services.

Sport

Stressing that sport and physical exercise strengthen physical and mental resilience, Parliament considered that general recovery instruments adopted by the EU in response to the crisis must help support the sports sector in the short term. It urged Member States to ensure that national support funds, the structural funds, and national recovery and resilience plans benefit the sports sector despite its specific characteristics and organisational structures.

The constraints caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and the lack of sufficient possibilities for regular training and practice in sports that require physical contact have been detrimental to the progression and development of athletes. Moreover, the resolution stressed the importance of solidarity within the European sporting community across and within different sports and called for increased support to minority and grassroots sport in the light of the economic difficulties in maintaining their activities.

More specifically, the Commission and the Member States are called on to strengthen the recovery and crisis resilience of the sports sector in general, and grassroots sport in particular, through the EU programmes available and for which the sector is eligible, including the Erasmus+ programme and the European Solidarity Corps, and to ensure full access for sport to the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the European Regional Development Fund, the Cohesion Fund, the European Social Fund Plus and EU4Health. An EU-wide approach is needed to help the sector recover, notably by addressing recovery within the EU Work Plan for Sport.

Parliament considered it useful to explore the development of new ways of practising sport in situations requiring physical distancing and for the Commission to coordinate all measures taken to address the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on sport in a dedicated EU action plan.