Building a Sustainable Future: How the State Budget Can Change the Lives of Children.

ATHENS,1 April 2025-The UNICEF Office in Greece in coordination with the Ministry of Economy and Finance, hosted an expert workshop on the role of government budgets for children on March 27. The theme of the workshop was based on Article 4 of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child,  which commits Member States to take measures, to the maximum extent of resources available to them, to uphold the economic, social and cultural rights of the child.

To this end, UNICEF aims to ensure that national budgets are as effective as possible to the rights and needs of children. Specifically, UNICEF's primary concern is to more accurately record and monitor resources allocated to children from government budgets and their strategic direction in the context of public spending policies based on the needs of children, especially the most disadvantaged.

The Secretary General for Fiscal Policy of the Ministry of Economy and Finance, Pavlina Karasiotou, noted: "In recent years we have seen an increasing demand for thematic budgets, such as the one for children, which are being implemented alongside formal budgeting processes.

Thematic budgets undoubtedly have an informative value that can be used to enhance transparency, accountability and parliamentary and social dialogue. However, the way in which each country approaches thematic budgets, at a methodological level, varies and depends on the specific characteristics, technical capacities and needs in general. Today’s expert workshop has been extremely fruitful in informing Greek authorities on these different approaches, particularly in the context of the ongoing financial and accounting reform in the Ministry of Economy and Finance".

As Aspa Plakantonaki, Deputy Representative in the UNICEF Greece Country Office pointed out: "Taking into account the needs of children as an integral dimension of our state budget today,  we are making an important investment in the future. In this way, we can break the cycle of poverty, strengthen educational outcomes, improve health levels and ultimately reduce inequalities."

Crucial to the outcome of the workshop was the presence of experts from the Ministries of Economy and Finance and Ministry of Social Cohesion and Family Affairs, as well as from the respective Ministries of Iceland, Spain and Scotland, who, in addition to their knowledge, shared good practices on the thematic budget and in particular the budget for children, the evaluation of the impact of its allocation and the value of investment of resources to realize children's rights.

The conference closed with the interventions of Pavlina Karasiotou, Secretary General for Fiscal Policy of the Ministry of Economy and Finance and Nektarios Alexopoulos, Head of the OECD Crete Centre on Population Dynamics, regarding the importance of thematic budgets, especially for children, as a tool for more effective development and funding of relevant public policies. A common finding was that child protection policies and family strengthening have increased in recent years and extending across the whole range of policies including education, health and social protection. A key issue is the development of tools for the ex post evaluation of results.