download - Deutsches Jugendinstitut e.V.

The European welfare systems – including those of the participating countries in this
documented experts’ conference – are currently under great pressure to change, as socioeconomic
and demographic developments accelerating the development of poverty are
producing strong emigrational movement and social and environmental segregation. The
immediacy of these problems has led to a partial watering down of the relevant welfare-sate
orientation on the level of programmes and strategies in participating nations in the fight
against social disadvantages for children and young persons. A variety of developments and
changes on a European level are responsible for this situation, for example the increasing
employment of women which has a varying influence on the structure of social security
systems in each individual country. Cross-border communication, intensified through the
development of a European youth policy motivated by Berlin and Strasbourg and expert
conferences such as the one documented here, has also played a part in the creation of
conceptual harmonisation which is in part progressively displaying effects which are less
dependent on welfare state traditions. Family-oriented nations develop structures which act
in intermediatory fashion between the state and family and thereby encourage
developments within the field of civil society. Countries such as Germany with a strong
welfare tradition are becoming reoriented and are providing more scope for activating
strategies targeting the individual resources of disadvantaged children and young persons.
This reorientation is however also partially due to the fact that the German welfare state in
its traditional form is becoming progressively more difficult to finance. Strongly liberal
oriented countries such as Great Britain permit a greater influence on the part of the state.
The term “Third Way”, coined in Great Britain by Anthony Giddens, which was
incorporated into the conceptual programme of Tony Blair’s New Labour strategy and
exerted an influence on a substantial part of European Social Democracy, is the expression
of this approach based on the fundamental orientation of Neo-liberalism and classical
welfare concepts (Giddens, 1997, 1998; Dingeldey 2006). Similarly, the concentration of
social problem complexes in many Western European countries in specific districts, urban
areas or rural regions seemingly irrespective of their welfare state context has led to the
development of (social) environmental programmes which are comparable on a European
level and resulted in approaches within the conceptual and management levels of strategies
and programmes.
These conceptual approaches, above all in West European nations, could be clearly
observed during the conference.
The programmes presented by the participating countries can be roughly divided into
two groups:
a) programmes with across-the-board content, planned over a longer period of time
and also implemented transversally on national, regional and local levels. This
includes the programmes and strategies of Great Britain, France, Portugal, Ireland
and Germany.
b) programmes approaching concrete problems which can be categorised under
specific themes; these are partially conceived on a transversal basis, but
implemented strictly according to individual departments. This includes the
programmes of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Lithuania.
109