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1. Mechanisms and actors

Mechanisms and actors

Youth policy decision-making in Flanders, Belgium, is fully decentralised to the Community level, with the Flemish Parliament and Flemish Government holding autonomous competence over youth and children’s rights policy, primarily through the Youth Decree of 23 November 2023 (see structure of decision-making under 1.4). While the Minister of Youth holds political responsibility, youth policy is structurally embedded across the Flemish administration: each policy domain appoints a contact point for youth and children’s rights, coordinated by the Department of Culture, Youth and Media.

This institutional design explicitly supports a cross-sectoral approach, ensuring that youth considerations are integrated into domains such as education, health, housing and social policy. Advisory bodies, intermediary organisations and local authorities further contribute to policy preparation and implementation, while local governments are given broad autonomy and integrated funding to pursue transversal youth policy across sectors without strict earmarking or reporting requirements.

Consequently, youth policy in Flanders stands at a distinctive crossroads. On the one hand, it is a categorical policy, focused on a specific population group: children and young people. On the other hand, it is inherently cross-cutting, intersecting with sectoral policy domains such as sport, culture, social policy, education, spatial planning, health and housing. Flemish youth policy therefore rests on the premise that a group-based policy approach is both possible and necessary. This is not self-evident. Public administration in Flanders is traditionally organised along sectoral lines, whereas a group-based approach starts from the lived realities of young people in all their complexity. Rather than addressing isolated sectors, it takes young people’s lives as a whole as its point of departure, encompassing their diverse needs, experiences and developmental opportunities.

Within this framework, each ministry and minister assume responsibility for defining and implementing actions linked to specific objectives of the Youth and Children’s Rights Policy Plan (JKP) 2025–2029 within their respective policy domain. The Minister for Youth has a coordinating role, ensuring coherence across policy areas and reporting to the government on the overall implementation of the Plan.