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1. Existence of a national strategy to increase young people's political and civil society participation

2. Scope and contents

3. Responsible authority for the implementation of the strategy

4. Monitoring and evaluation

5. Revisions/ Updates

Existence of a national strategy to increase young people's political and civil society participation

Youth participation is specifically elaborated in the document Proposal of the Strategy for the Support and Development of Participation of Children and Young People in Slovakia/Návrh stratégie na podporu a rozvoj participácie detí a mladých ľudí na Slovensku. The document is an output of the project Creating mechanisms for the participation of children and youth in school decision-making processes and the creation of public youth policies funded through the Operational Program Effective Public Administration and has only a recommendatory character.

The officially recognized document is the Strategy of the Slovak Republic for Youth for the years 2014 – 2020/Stratégia Slovenskej republiky pre mládež na roky 2014 – 2020, in which youth participation is covered in a separate chapter.

Scope and contents

The Youth Strategy 2014-2020defines framework objectives for the national, regional and local level.

Key objectives of the thematic field participation:

• support of innovative forms of youth participation,
• encouragement of student participation in the school environment,
• introduction of qualitative standards of youth participation,
• encouragement of youth participation by means of information and counselling,
• e-Democracy and provision of information in a comprehensible language.

The Strategy emphasises the importance of young people with fewer opportunities involvement as a horizontal priority; it does not emphasise any special groups of young people in the chapter about participation.

Responsible authority for the implementation of the strategy

The Ministry of Education, Science, Research and Sport of the Slovak Republic (MESRS) is responsible for the coordination of the state policy towards youth within the framework of the Youth Strategy.

Youth participation is an inter-ministerial/cross-sectoral topic.

No institution is legally responsible for the fulfilment of the objectives of the Youth Strategy within the field of participation.

Monitoring and evaluation

MESRS evaluates achievement of the objectives of the Youth Strategy annually. Evaluation results are presented in Youth Reports.

Sources of information for evaluation:

• thematic surveys and researches e.g. "Self-government and youth",
• opening of the COMMUNITY for Youth state grant programme of MESRS supporting surveys on self-governmental policy for the purposes of the evaluation,
• opening of the EVIDENCE about Young People grant programme of MESRS that is specifically targeted to obtain relevant and reliable information on young people through research,
• an analysis of the measures from other public-and-state institutions as well as non-governmental organisations are a part of the evaluation,

• youth consultations (with young people).

Revisions/Updates

The Youth Strategy 2014 - 2020 was formally evaluated in the middle of its implementation in 2017. Decisions on possible revisions or updates is taken by the Inter-ministerial Working Group for the State Policy in the Field of Youth.

In 2019 the process of preparation of new national Youth Strategy started.  Working group consists of umbrella organisations active in youth work and youth policy such as National Youth Council, regional Youth Councils, Association of Leisure-Time Activities Centres etc. Preparation is coordinated by the MESRS