International Youth Organisations and their EU Grants

On assignment of the European Commission DOCA Bureaus has carried out an evaluation of EU grants to international non-governmental youth organisations. These are grants that were awarded to them in 1999 and 2000 on the basis of budget line A-3029. In 1999, 107 organisations, and for 2000, 89 organisation received such grants. This grant system has its roots in the resolution of the European Parliament of 14 June 1991 on “Community policies and their effects on young people”. Since the Commission expected also recommendations based upon the evaluation results, we made a global assessment of the political context of the grant system. The most important issue in the political context appeared to be the upcoming budget system of the EU. The new budget system is known as the Activity Based Budget system, which will be in operation from 2004 onwards. This budget system might exclude further grants for international youth organisations as they are now awarded under budget line A-3029. This final report presents the outcome of the evaluation and our recommendations, taking into consideration the stronger and weaker points of the evaluation model that was applied. In particular, it should be taken into consideration that our conclusions concerning the global effects of the grants and our recommendations were based on expert opinion of a rather restricted group, both in numbers and profile. Thus, these conclusions and recommendations do not represent hard evidence, as opposed to the conclusions and recommendations concerning operational aspects and specific outcomes. Therefore, they are to be seen as a modest but fair contribution to the political debate on future EU-grants for international youth organisations.