“Europe’s youth, between hope and despair” is the name of the report that Caritas Europa edited about the problems of young people’s poverty and social exclusion. The survey, which will be published on March 28th at a meeting at the European Policy Centre (Epc) in Brussels, intends to “provide a narrative to the existing official statistics”, which speak of 1 boy or girl out of 3 being affected by the “consequences of poverty”. That’s why Caritas, which today gave a little preview of the survey, gathered information about the “qualitative situation of young people who use social services provided by Caritas agencies” in 16 countries. The overview shows increasing social exclusion of young men and women, rising feelings of intergenerational injustice”, and complaints that “the European promise of equal opportunities and the levelling out of regional inequalities has been broken”. The existing, effective European responses, such as the Youth Guarantee and the Youth Employment Initiative, “sometimes fail to reach out to the most deeply excluded groups”. Caritas’s survey also calls the States “not to relinquish control” and let welfare services be delivered by “market forces”. The full survey will be presented by Shannon Pfohman (Caritas Europa) and will be instantly discussed by delegates of the Directorate for Social Affairs at the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund, and the European Youth Forum.