Although the participation of more and more young people in voluntary activities and the regulation of volunteering within youth work remain important issues, an overarching structural reform is not yet envisaged. 

Forthcoming policy developments

The 2014-2020 financial cycle of the European Union has ended, so the planning processes for the next cycle 2021-2027, are already underway. According to the Ministry in 2020, the development of the the future framework programmes and constructions has started in 2020 and plans to include an operational programme on volunteering, which will address the opinion and work of the civil sector in the field of volunteering.

According to the Ministry’s preliminary ideas, the main objectives will be the following:

• further promotion the culture of volunteering,
• increasing the proportion of volunteers among the adult population and among young people,
• to increase the proportion of young people aged 18-29 who have been volunteering at some point in their lives,
• encouraging corporate volunteering and CSR activities,
• development of professional standards for volunteer training and for volunteer coordinators and mentors,
• organisational and methodological development and quality improvement,
• active involvement of Hungarian communities abroad into volunteering in Hungary,
• a stronger link between volunteering and sustainable development.

According to the Ministry, age-based segmentation is not planned for the time being, however, in the future, there could be programmes and projects related to volunteering which mainly aim the younger or older generations.

Ongoing debates

According to Ministry information in 2022, the three main questions that are currently discussed:

• How the participation of young people could be increased in voluntary activities?
• How the quality of voluntary coordination of youth could be improved?
• How the quality of voluntary activities could be improved in certain fields (e.g. social, healthcare) and how the youth could be effectively involved?