Youth Policy in Lithuania

Youth policy in Lithuanian legal acts is defined as a purposeful activity intended to resolve youth problems and to seek to create favourable conditions for the formation of the personality of a young person and his integration into public life, as well as an activity which has the purpose of achieving understanding and tolerance of society and individual groups thereof towards young people. Youth policy in Lithuania is understood as the entirety of systems and measures, aspiring after the most favorable terms for personal maturity of a young person and successful integration into society. It is generally accepted to refer to structures of assistance (fields of socialization), subsidiary adding to the effort of a person and, especially, of a family, and helping to prepare a young person for independent life. These structures can be divided into informal (friends, contemporaries), non-formal (communities, non-governmental organizations, youth activity system), formal (schools, universities), and commercial (telecommunications, banks, recreation and entertainment industry). Youth policy in Lithuania is developed in two directions. First, ensuring the interests of youth in individual fields of public policy – education and science, culture, sports, work and employment, housing, health care and well-being, participation, etc. Second, youth activities aimed at enabling young people to learn from experience and experiment (voluntariness, independence, autonomy). The youth policy is shaped by the Lithuanian Ministry of Social Security and Labour; in the field of social security and labour, it is implemented by the Agency of Youth Affairs, municipal authorities, other establishments and institutions in cooperation with non-governmental sector. In  the beginning of the year 2024, young people in Lithuania accounted for nearly 16 percent of the country's population. The number of young people as well as residents in other population groups is dropping as emigration of young people has been significantly speeding up the ageing of population. Thus, the policy emphasizes that the youth of Lithuania is one of the most important factors contributing to the future stability of the country. Youth policy is developed in multi-year programmes. The National Youth Policy Development Programme covered the period 2011 to 2019. The Action Plan of the National Youth Policy 2022-2024 sets out the objectives, tasks, measures, qualitative and quantitative evaluation criteria for the implementation of the national youth policy in the field of youth policy for 2022 including measures addressing Covid-19 pandemic. The Action Plan of the National Youth Policy 2023-2027 was approved in July 2023, the purpose of which is to determine measures to strengthen the implementation of the national youth policy.