Upon the invitation of French President François Hollande, twenty four European leaders participated, on Tuesday 12 November 2013, at a Conference in Paris in order to discuss the issue of youth unemployment, which has been pointed out as one of the most pressing problems that Europe currently faces.

According to the European Commission's latest statistics, the EU-wide youth unemployment rate stands at 23.5 %. A total of 7.5 million young people, aged 15-24, are neither in employment, nor in education or training, while figures in Greece and Spain are the highest on the continent, at 57.3% and 56.5% respectively.

Addressing the Conference, Greek PM Samaras outlined the general direction of the Greek government's new policies, aiming at structural economic and labour reforms. Samaras stressed that Greece was fully prepared for a comprehensive implementation, as of January 2014, of two programmes - the "Young People's Initiative" and the "Guarantees for Youth" - designed by the EU to create new jobs for young people.

He added that "apart from these structural interventions and necessary cyclical initiatives, we need a long-term strategy to alleviate the repercussions of the crisis for young people" […] This calls for a sustainable model of growth that would guide the European continent in the coming decades". The Greek premier concluded on an optimistic note, saying that "2014 must be the year of recovery of the European economy, which will allow us to deal decisively with unemployment among the young."