1.7 Funding youth policy
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How Youth policy is funded
There is no specific budget for youth policy at the Youth Board of Cyprus. The costs for the youth policy initiatives are funded ad hoc from several other budget lines within the governmental actors that implement policies and programmes for young people. Information on these budget lines can be extracted from the two Action Plans of the National Youth Strategy which include the actions/measures taken by the top-level authorities, such as the ministries and the commissioners, targeting youth, accompanied by their respective budget.
What is funded?
The policy priorities receiving funds are the eight areas included in the National Youth Strategy and they can be found under the section “Scope and contents” of sub-chapter 1.3.
The Youth Board, through the National Funding Scheme “Youth Initiatives” with a budget of around €500 000 – described in section 10.3 - provides funds to the National Youth Council, youth centres, youth organisations, municipal and community youth councils in order to carry out projects targeting youth.
Financial accountability
With regard to the budget administered by the government agencies, including the Youth Board of Cyprus, the competent authority for the assessment of public financial management and accountability is the Audit Office of the Republic of Cyprus. As an independent authority, the Audit Office of the Republic of Cyprus is responsible for auditing the accounts of the central government, of public law entities, local administration authorities and other public organizations and funds. It conducts financial, performance and compliance audits as well as technical audits of development and other projects.
The main regulation governing, among others, the financial accountability of associations and institutions, is the “The Societies and Institutions and Other Related Matters Law of 2017” (available only in Greek). The 2017 Law introduced, between others, the financial accountability and transparency of NGOs.
For the time being, there are no links between external evaluation of programmes and policies and accountability of recipients of public funds.
Use of EU Funds
According to Second Action Plan (2020-2022) of the National Youth Strategy, the European Social Fund, the European Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF) and the European Regional Development Fund have been used for the youth policy at top level. Moreover, youth policy initiatives are included in the Cyprus Recovery and Resilience Plan that was funded by the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (the “RRF”), as well as in the Programme “THALIA 2021-2027”, which reflects the development strategy of the utilization of the resources allocated to Cyprus through the Cohesion Policy Funds, for the period 2021-2027.
The main policy initiatives/programmes funded are the National Action Plan for Youth Unemployment (which includes also the Youth Guarantee Scheme), the job incentive schemes of the Labour Department and the Grant Scheme on "Strengthening New Entrepreneurship" («Σχέδιο Νέας Επιχειρηματικής Δραστηριότητας») that was announced in 2021. Other youth-related initiatives/programmes receiving EU Funds is the Project “Establishing Non-Formal/Informal Learning Validation Mechanisms and Pilot Implementation" (Θέσπιση Μηχανισμών για την Επικύρωση της Μη-Τυπικής και Άτυπης Μάθησης), and the Youth makerspace of the Youth Board, co-funded by the European Social Fund.
Under the Programme “THALIA 2021-2027”, the Policy Objective 4 “A more Social and Inclusive Europe” includes a specific priority for supporting Youth Employment with a total budget of €45M.
The Cyprus Recovery and Resilience Plan includes policy initiatives that aim to increase employment for young people not in employment, education or training (NEETs).
There is no available data on the amount of funding earmarked specifically for youth from those EU funds. There are also no existing evaluations of the youth-related programmes receiving EU funds, nor trends in the amount or in the type of activities supported through EU funds.