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1. Structure of Decision-making

2. Main Themes

3. The National Agency for Youth

4. Policy monitoring and evaluation

Structure of Decision-making

The main central authority responsible for the youth field is the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities, established in January 2022. Until December 2021 the main central authority for youth was the Ministry of Youth and Sport.

The Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities cooperates with other central administration bodies for organising and promoting the activities for young people.

The Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities was established in January 2022 (as part of the Government installed on 25 November 2021). According to the Government Decision on the organisation of the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities, the ministry has the following responsibilities in the field of youth:

• ensures the implementation of the governmental programme and policies in the field of youth,
• establishes priorities, typology of projects / actions / activities for youth, budget for programs, projects, activities and elaborates action plans, procedures, methodologies, project calendars, monitoring and evaluation plans for youth activity;
• initiates, develops, implements and monitors youth legislation;
• carries out studies and analyses on youth and students issues;
• collaborates with central and local public authorities, institutional, social and organizational partners, internally and externally, in order to achieve the objectives in the field of youth;
• initiates, develops, organizes, finances, implements, monitors, evaluates programs, projects, activities and actions for domestic and international youth and finances projects on a competitive basis, in accordance with the law;
• establishes youth centres, in accordance with the law;
• elaborates and implements the plan for rehabilitation and extension of leisure centres and ensures the organization and administration of these leisure centres;
• ensures the organization, administration, rehabilitation and extension of student culture houses;
• provides specialist assistance to students and student association structures in the development of projects and programs aimed at boosting student participation, in its various forms, including by involving them in decision-making, stimulating student creativity, promoting student mobility in Europe and mitigating the impact of risk factors leading to marginalization and social exclusion;
• organizes directly or through subordinate institutions leisure activities, national camps, leisure camps, social camps, thematic camps for children, students and young people

At the local level, the Counties Offices for Family and Youth are the decentralized services of the central authority and they are organised in accordance with a Government decision regarding their organisation. The Counties Offices for Family and Youth have the following responsibilities in the field of youth:

• implementing the national programmes in the field of youth (as well as the policies for family and equal opportunities),
• monitoring the implementation of the legislation the fields under their responsibility,
• cooperating with other local and central structures to organise cultural, artistic, leisure, educative, touristic activities for youth and family, both local and international,
• offering specialized support to other public bodies to create programmes for youth,
• offering counselling and information services for young people,
• creating a data-base of youth NGOs in the county,
• organising activities, seminars and trainings based on non-formal education methodologies
• organising youth camps,
• organising social programmes for vulnerable young people and children.

Main Themes

While the National Youth Policy Strategy 2015-2020 (hereafter: Youth Strategy 2015-2020) covered a very large set of themes, only four of the main priorities of the strategy are in the direct responsibility of the main decision making structure in the field of youth in Romania: the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities. These themes are:

• Non-formal learning
• Youth volunteering
• Youth public and political participation
• Youth leisure

Other themes of interest for the youth policy are employment, education, entrepreneurship and social-inclusion. However, youth is not central in these fields and there are few policy measures directly dedicated to young people, as presented in the following sections of Youth Wiki - Romania.

For all these teams, as for the other in the Youth Strategy 2015-2020, the main information sources are the Youth Barometers that has been commissioned by the Ministry every two years between 2012 and 2020 and continued by NGOs and research centres in 2022, as presented in section 1.6 Evidence-based Youth Policy.

The National Agency for Youth

There is no National Agency for Youth organised in Romania. In 2010 the National Agency for Youth and the National Agency for Sports merged and become the Ministry of Youth and Sports, as provided by the Government Ordinance on the measurements to reorganise some activities in the field of youth and sport no. 15/2010. In January 2022 the administration of the youth field was transferred to the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities.

Policy monitoring and evaluation

According to the Youth Strategy 2015-2020, the Ministry of Youth and Sports was responsible to draft a monitoring and evaluation plan of the Strategy. However, such plan was not drafted or approved. As a result, an evidence-based monitoring/assessment/evaluation of the implementation of the national Youth Strategy has not been conducted. An evaluation of the Ministry of Youth and Sports Programmes for Youth, including actions implementing the Youth Strategy have been commissioned in 2016 and published by the December 2016. An evaluation of the Youth Strategy 2015-2020 has been conducted in 2022, with the support of the World Bank, but it was not published.  

Monitoring of projects and actions under the Ministry of Youth and Sports Programmes for Youth is only done from the financial/budget point of view. Records are not centralised for evaluation purposes. This practice creates difficulties for the subsequent evaluations, as experienced in 2016 and 2022 when the programmes and the strategy evaluations had been conducted. In the absence of a monitoring and evaluation plan of the Youth Strategy 2015-2020, all evaluations (carried out until December 2021 by the Ministry of Youth and Sports and since 2022 by the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities) are ad-hoc and not periodical. Moreover, the results of the evaluation conducted in 2016 have not been used for the design of future Youth Programmes, as their framework remained unchanged in 2017 and the following years compared to 2016 and the previous years.

On the other hand, The Ministry of European Investments and Programmes conducted evaluations regarding the European programmes targeting young people and the implementation of the Youth Guarantee:

• an evaluation report on the European Social Fund interventions targeting youth was commissioned in 2014 and delivered in 2015;
• the first evaluation report on the Youth Employment Initiative implementation until the end of 2015 and lessons learned from European Social Fund projects targeting NEETs was commissioned by the in 2015 and delivered in 2016. 
• The second evaluation report on the Youth Employment Initiative has been conducted and published in 2019.
• The third evaluation of the Youth Employment Initiative and other measures targeting young NEETs was integrated in the evaluation of the Evaluation of the Operational Programme Human Capital, focused on specific objectives regarding employment, published in December 2020.
• The forth evaluation of the Youth Employment Initiative and other measures targeting young NEETs was integrated in the evaluation of the second Evaluation of the Operational Programme Human Capital, focused on specific objectives regarding employment, conducted and published in 2023.

These reports where only used in programming and organising the implementation of the European Social Fund 2014-2020 and European Social Fund Plus 2021-2027 programmes. The Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Family, Youth and Equal Opportunities were not citing or quoting these reports when publishing decisions on policy activities, their annual programmes or their own projects.

The culture of monitoring and evaluation public policies is rather week in Romania. As a result, among the different policy fields relevant for the young people, evaluations are only common for the EU funded programmes financially supporting a policy or public project. In these cases, evaluations are used for the programming of EU funded programmes, rather than for the design of national policies.

All evaluations carried out in the field of youth are commissioned research papers or evaluation reports, providing empirical evidence to the decision makers. Consultation of young people targeted by policies and programme is carried out to ensure empirical data. 

The EU Youth Dialogue is an important process for the consultation of young people and the results are taken into account in planning public projects by Government bodies at central/national level. However, the consultation of young people through the EU Youth Dialogue was rather week in Romania in 2022-2023 and there is no link between the results of the EU Youth Dialogue and the policy and EU programmes evaluations.