Governments in Europe dream of finding a magic solution to rising unemployment. But, in the poorest parts of the EU, unemployment continues to rise.
Now, in Sardinia, Italy, a mayor thinks he has found an answer to his town’s unemployment problem. Valter Piscedda, the mayor of Elmas, a small town near Sardinia’s capital, Cagliari, wants to pay residents to leave. The town will pay for ten unemployed local people to take English lessons, get on a cheap flight and look for jobs in other parts of Europe.
“This idea comes from common sense and experience, ” he told the Guardian. “In the past year and a half – especially in the past few months – I have seen young people, almost every day, who have lost hope that they will find work. Some ask for help in finding work here. Others have tried everything and, now, they want to go and gain work experience abroad; life experience, too.”
So he decided to help people who want to gain experience abroad.
Sardinia, and also much of southern and central Italy, is struggling with high unemployment. Unemployment was at 17.7% in the second quarter of 2014, according to Italy’s National Institute of Statistics. More than 54% of people under 25 are out of work. 
For the Adesso Parto (Now I’m leaving) programme, Elmas will give €12,000 to the first ten applicants aged between 18 and 50. The applicants must be out of work and have lived in the town for three years. They do not have to be university educated and they must not earn more than €15,000.
The idea of helping people to leave is sensitive at a time when many Italians – many of them clever young graduates – are leaving their country every year. But Piscedda believes that the people he is sending away might return “and give me back 100 times what we gave them”. More importantly, he wants the scheme to help the people most in need.
In Elmas, the scheme has got mixed reactions. “There is little work here,” said Alessandro Macis. “The opportunity to go abroad to learn about the workplace and experience other cultures can be very worthwhile. The son of a friend of mine who didn’t study much is in London and he’s doing very well. He started as a waiter. Now, he’s a cook and he’s learning English.”
Others were not sure. “I heard about it but I thought it was strange. If you have that money to pay for people to go away, why don’t you use that money to keep them here?” said Consuelo Melis, who works in a local café.
But Piscedda says, “The work I can create, as mayor, is temporary. I can ask someone to clean a piazza. I can ask them to clean it again. I can ask someone to clean the streets. But these are all temporary things that give nothing more than a little bit of money for a few months.”