To combat youth unemployment in the European Union (EU) in the aftermath of the economic and financial crisis, several policy measures were adopted – both at the national and the EU level. In this study, we examine the Youth Guarantee and offer a nuanced assessment of how public and private actors cooperate in delivering the Youth Guarantee. To explain the variation observed in the degree of coordination between public and private actors, we propose concentrating in particular on the individual countries’ experience with active labour market policy. Our empirical analysis shows that EU member states with greater spending on social security and education as well as on active labour market policies reduces the number of private actors reported to cooperate in the implementation of the Youth Guarantee. Thus, the more experienced countries are with active labour market policies and welfare spending, the lower is the number of private actors involved in policy delivery. We believe that our empirical findings are insightful for both the literature on (EU) policy implementation and governance.
