Summary :
Abstract
This paper examines how the European-Mediterranean (EuroMed) partnership can empower Mediterranean (MED) youth to contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through innovation, digital transformation, green and renewable energy and inclusive economic policies. The focus is on closing the youth skills gap, fostering youth entrepreneurship, and promoting green jobs to address youth unemployment and integrate young people into global value chains. Despite MED youth representing a significant portion of the population, there is limited research on the role of the EuroMed partnership in fostering youth employment through digitalization, entrepreneurship, and green jobs. This paper fills that gap by providing empirical evidence and proposing targeted policy interventions to align youth employment strategies with the SDGs, specifically Goals 8 (Decent Work) and 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure). This research adopts an endogenous growth theory framework combined with an unrestricted Panel Vector Autoregression (PVAR) model across five MED countries (Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey). The most striking result of our empirical analysis is the complete absence of short-term causality between youth employment and the set of studied variables, despite the foundations of action emerging in the long term. Policy implications focus on promoting digital skills, entrepreneurship, and inclusive policies that foster youth-led innovation and including mainly enhancing vocational training for green jobs, integrating youth into decision-making processes, and promoting startup ecosystems to drive sustainable employment.