Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.
Skip to main content
European Commission logo

YouthWiki

EACEA National Policies Platform
Latvia

Latvia

5. Participation

5.10 Current debates and reforms

Last update: 28 November 2023

According to the 2015's Youth Policy from monitoring in general only a small part of Latvian youth are actively participation - different kinds of activities regularly engage in no more than one quarter of young people. At the same time in the last five years of studies showing positive trends - inactive proportion of young people has fallen significantly. Although it is believed that information is now widely available to anyone big is the proportion of young people who appreciate that they do not have enough information about the opportunities to participate and engage in various activities. It makes judged hitherto used sources of information and to think about new ways of supplying information that are relevant to young people's communication habits. At the same time - the interest of young people to participate is significantly lower than the engagement. This shows that Latvian should be emphasized more than the possibility of extension, but a participation interest stimulation.

One of the explanations for low participation could be associated with low levels of social capital - almost 2/5 of Latvian youth expresses distrust of other people, which is a major obstacle to cooperation, common social and public activities, according to the 2015 's youth policy monitoring data. Extremely low it is also young people trust the state and local government institutions, which in turn is likely to undermine young people's interest and willingness to engage in political activities. Meanwhile, in 2015, carried out by the Youth Policy Monitoring showed that the EU is trusted by 47% of young people.

These are the problems and issues on the debate now. With the upcoming local government elections in June 2017, the participation of Young people in elections is now disused and debated about.