Forthcoming policy developments

Recognition of young people's commitment in civil society

The government decided in the autumn of 2023 to commission an investigator to analyze and submit proposals on how a public recognition with the aim of valuing young people's commitment and efforts in civil society could be designed. The assignment was reported in August 2024, with the following main proposals:

• Establish a digital micro-merit system. The Swedish National Council of Adult Education (Folkbildningsrådet) is given a special task to make visible and verify young people's experiences and skills from their non-profit involvement through a system of digital micromerits.
• Association knowledge in compulsory school. In order to increase knowledge about the possibilities of associational life and to implement the goals in the Curriculum for compulsory school, the National Agency for Education (Skolverket) is tasked with developing a national school development program with a focus on associational knowledge for primary school.
• The county board's award for young commitment. The county boards (länsstyrelser) in each county must annually publicly recognize the non-profit involvement of young people at a ceremony. On these occasions, young people or youth organizations that have made meritorious contributions within the county through non-profit involvement shall be recognized and receive a prize.
• Strengthen the non-profit leadership role. Ensure that youth organizations can apply for special funds to implement leadership training and mentorship programs.
• Ensure the inclusion of young people in government investigations and specialist councils. Strengthening the inclusion of young people in government investigations and other decision-making processes needs to take place. The form for this should consist of two parts; the directives to investigations that affect children and young people should state that the investigation must gather experiences and opinions from children and young people, and an internal work within the Government Office is carried out to increase the participation of young people in decision-making processes.

In November 2024, the government has not yet decided on the inquiry's proposals.

Ongoing debates

Actions to promote young people's participation

Young people's influence and participation has been a central part of Swedish youth policy since it was introduced in the early 1990s. The Government's youth policy action programme for the years 2021-2024 includes efforts for promoting young people's participation in democracy. Some examples of the actions are presented in section 5.8 Raising political awareness among young people.

Lowering the voting age to 16

The EU Youth Dialogue was during 2020-2021 focusing on the Youth Goal 9, Space and participation for all. The goal has several targets, one of them being "Increase youth participation and thus equal representation in the electoral process as well as in elected bodies and other decision-making organs at all levels of society."

The Youth Conference under the German precidency formed among others the following political demand:

"Ensure young people's access to formal decisionmaking by lowering the age of voting and political candidacy to 16 in all elections, while ensuring all youths have the opportunity to gain sufficient skills and motivation to participate actively and passively in elections, as well as removing all barriers to voting."

In Sweden, a proposal of lowering the voting age in municipal elections has been raised on a few occasions since the turn of the millennium, but so far interest has been low. The youth movement is actively buildning opinion in favour for lowering the voting age, but among the political parties only the Green Party (Miljöpartiet de gröna) has it on the party's agenda. In November 2021, the Minister for Culture and Democracy, Amanda Lind (Green party), submitted five proposals to strengthen Swedish democracy in a debate article, one of which was to lower the voting age to 16. Althoug the proposal was given by a minister, it is yet not a government proposal.