2016-09-15
National Audit Office Assessed the Implementation of the Youth Policy in the Field of Social Security and Labour
Lithuania lacks more ambitious planning and qualitative approach to the results of the implementation of the youth policy in the field of social security and labour. Moreover, measures and indicators of the youth policy are not linked to Lithuania's Progress Strategy, which makes it difficult to measure their contribution to the country's progress. These are the findings of the audit performed by the supreme audit institution.
The assessment of how the youth policy is being shaped and how 1.9 million euros were used on the youth policy in the field of social security and labour in 2015 revealed that some projects receive funding without prior assessment of their qualitative impact on the youth, project implementation procedures lack control, and some measures are redundant. Activities of institutions implementing the policy also lack effectiveness.
Public auditors, furthermore, noticed systemic deficiencies in the shaping of the youth policy. In 2016, 83 percent of funds were allocated to tackling the issues of youth unemployment, i.e. spent on young people not in education, employment or training, even though they account for only 6.3 percent of all the young people in the country. Therefore, less attention and resources can be devoted to the solving of other important issues. The process of identifying and solving problems of young people is further complicated by the fact that different legal acts and measures in Lithuania understand and define the relevant age limits differently: depending on the case at hand, people from 14–19 to 23–34 can be attributed to the group of young people.
In 2015, young people in Lithuania accounted for nearly 20 percent of the country's population. Over the same year, 44.5 thousand residents left the country, of which 49 percent were young people. It should be noted that young people are among the primary preconditions for stable future; however, according to the European Commission, the national budget share allocated to young people in Lithuania is among the smallest in the European Union. In 2015, the Ministry of Social Security and Labour allocated 18 million euros to the youth policy. Only 7.3 euros of the state budget per person were allocated to the participation of young people in various project activities (the objective for 2015 was to reach 24.62 euros).
Taking into account the problems identified during the audit, the supreme audit institution issued recommendations to the Ministry of Social Security and Labour, including the need to ensure higher added value of youth projects funded from the state budget, increasing project control, identifying problems of all youth groups, seeking qualitative or qualitatively significant results when shaping the youth policy, etc.