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Spaniards snap up German training offers

George Mills
George Mills - [email protected]
Spaniards snap up German training offers
Some 85,000 Spaniards are registered as living in Germany. File photo: Zoetnet/Flickr

Spaniards have taken up more than half of the training places on offer in a new German government programme designed to get young Europeans back to work.

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Hundreds of Spaniards have signed up for the Job of My Life programme set up by Germany's employment ministry, 20 minutos reported on Monday.

The €40-million ($55 million) programme offers jobs and training positions to skilled unemployment Europeans aged from 18 to 35 in fields where there is a staffing shortage in Germany.

"The quota of Spaniards enrolling in the programme is over 50 percent. The programme has aroused a huge amount of interest" Beate Raabe of Germany's Federal Employment Agency (BMAS) told 20 minutos.

Around a third of the 1,200 job offers have been snapped up by Spaniards, while a "huge majority" of the training places have been filled by young people from Spain. 

Spain's youth unemployment rate at the end of 2012 was 7.9 percent according to Eurostat. This figure in Germany was just 7.9 percent.

The German government says tens of thousands of university graduates are needed while BMAS says some 33,000 apprenticeship positions will need to be filled. Germany is now paying €10,000 per student via the Job of My  Life programme to make up the shortfall.

Spanish figures show that 17,074 Spaniards are living in Germany but a recent study by Spanish think tank Fundación Alternativas cites German census figures showing there are 85,397 Spanish residents in Europe's largest country.

Study author González Ferrer puts this discrepancy down to the fact that many Spaniards wait years before registering with Spanish authorities in Germany.

Youth immigration is a political hot potato in Germany with the conservative Popular Party government trying to talk down the numbers or young people leaving. Opponents, however, say the government's economic and employment policies have given rise to the 'brain drain' phenomenon.

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