Hello Aadje,
I can only speak from my own experiences here in the UK - I am a 'young' driver (23) and have a Peugeot 306 1.4 1999 model. It costs me about 350 GBP to insure and I get about 48 MPG on the motorway. We have had 4 of these cars all together. These cars have been incredibly cost effective, very cheap servicing costs (a whole lot of parts run parallel with Citroen as well as other models like the Peugeot 106 etc) and very very easy to service (and even cheaper) if you don't mind getting your hands dirty.
If you are interested and can get your hands on one of these try to go for a >1997 model as the engines all changed to multipoint injection offering a smidge more efficiency:performance. The driver and passenger airbags are another good reason to go for this age range, I believe that only the top end models had passenger airbags before this time.
Build quality is (in my opinion) very good when compared to a Mark 3 VW Golf which feels very 'thin' when you use anything. Although to be fair, VW stopped making them in 1998 so I'm not sure how fair that test is
Good luck with your driving license and choosing a car!!