Fraudulent contracting of work : Abusing traineeship status (Austria, Finland, Spain and UK)

Various types of traineeship are found across EU Member States. Traineeships have recently been actively promoted by the European Commission as a political response to persistent high youth unemployment rates.

These programmes help young people experience a smoother ‘school-to-work’ transition by tackling some of the barriers they commonly face when entering the labour market.

However, European and national stakeholders express growing concern regarding abuses of the system, poor working conditions and fraudulent practices, including the replacement of regular workers with trainees.