Discussion of findings
Strategic recommendations and national priorities addressed by ESF+ funding
From a children’s rights perspective, the absence of explicit policy attention has tangible implications for how children’s needs are recognised and prioritised. The operationalisation of ESF+ funding in Finland is influenced not only by EU-level strategies but also by national political priorities, particularly those outlined in the Government Programme a Strong and Committed Finland (Finnish Government, 2023). National strategies are prepared through multi-actor processes involving ministries, expert bodies, and, in some cases, participatory mechanisms for children and young people, which also influence prioritisation. As demonstrated in this study, ESF+ funding calls under specific objective 4.3 do not aim to comprehensively reflect all priorities articulated in EU strategies and national policy documents, but rather emphasise selected recommendations considered particularly relevant in the Finnish policy context.
The emphases are closely connected to Finland’s demographic development, where population growth is projected to slow and decline (see Alho & Valkonen, 2024), while labour supply challenges are expected to intensify. In this context, ESF+ funding has been strategically directed towards initiatives that promote inclusion, participation, and competence development among children, young people, and families in vulnerable situations.
The Government Programme highlights the importance strengthening democracy, participation, and social cohesion, with a specific focus on children and young people. Previous research underscores the need to address inequality and structural barriers within Finnish education and early childhood education and care. For example, Helakorpi et al. (2023) demonstrate that students with immigrant backgrounds in Nordic countries face increased risk of discrimination, bullying, and educational discontinuation. Similarly, Loukola (2023) identifies manifestations of racism and white normativity in Finnish early childhood education, while also noting professionals’ willingness to develop more inclusive practices. These findings provide important contextual grounding for understanding why inclusion-oriented priorities have been foregrounded in ESF+ funding.
The first and third ESF+ funding calls under specific objective 4.3 emphasised guidance for children and young people in cultural, sports, and structured leisure activities. These calls supported the development and piloting of supervised leisure activities in arts, culture, and sports for young people aged 15–19, as well as cultural activities for children aged 7–19. This focus reflects the Government Programme’s identification of physical inactivity as a significant societal challenge. Only one in three children and young people in Finland engage in sufficient physical activity to maintain health, with far-reaching consequences for learning, work capacity, national defence, and the economy. The estimated annual societal cost of physical inactivity is approximately €3.2 billion.
To address these challenges, the Government calls for a comprehensive, cross-sectoral approach starting in early childhood services. It aims to ensure that every child and young person has access to at least one meaningful leisure activity of their choice, with special attention to those without a hobby or who have dropped out. Initiatives such as the national Schools on the Move programme (LIKES, 2025) support these objectives, including mapping opportunities for leisure activities during school holidays.
In parallel, ESF+ funding has contributed to sustaining cultural and sports services at time when the Ministry of Education and Culture faces approximately €125 million in funding cuts to subsidies affecting the independent arts and culture sector (Sokka & Nokela, 2025). This raises the question of whether, in this context, ESF+ funding may also partly function not only as a social inclusion instrument but also as a means of supporting cultural infrastructure relevant to children and young people.
National Child Strategy priorities and ESF+ funding
Although the implementation plan of Finland’s National Child Strategy (Finnish Government, 2022) extends beyond individual government terms, the ESF+ funding calls under objective 4.3 reflect several of its core priorities. These include strengthening family-friendly policies, supporting the reconciliation of work, studies, and family life, and recognising the diversity of families. The second funding call focused on parenting support and low-threshold services for families, reflecting priorities from both the National Child Strategy and the Government Programme. The Government aims to provide low-threshold services for families, with attention to couple and parenting support, the best interests of the child, and the individual circumstances of families, with particular attention to the challenges faced by families with small children, single parents, student families, and families with multiple children.
Despite Finland’s comparatively strong position in terms of gender equality and women’s labour market participation, socioeconomic and cultural differences between families continue to affect children’s well-being. European research (e.g. Dewilde, 2025) highlights the individual and societal impacts of child poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage. Preventing the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage (see Dewilde, 2025) can been influenced, for instance, through strategic allocation of funding.
Strategic gaps and unaddressed themes
While many EU and national priorities are reflected in the ESF+ funding calls, the analysis also reveals significant gaps. One overarching theme, child-friendly justice, is entirely absent from the analysed national strategies, thematic descriptions, and funding calls. However, the government’s shared learning platform eOppiva (HAUS, n.d.), includes several modules on child-friendly justice, and is widely used across sectors, including municipalities and educational institutions.
In addition, several core elements of the ECG, including explicit references to access to adequate nutrition, adequate housing, and comprehensive child-specific healthcare, receive limited or no attention in the analysed documents. These omissions do not imply that such needs are not addressed elsewhere within Finnish policy or service systems. Finland provides free school meals to all children in comprehensive education, thereby responding to the ECG’s recommendation of ensuring access to at least one healthy meal each school day. Moreover, issues related to child poverty and nutrition are addressed within other ESF+ priority axes, such as priority axis 6 (Combating material deprivation), which were outside the scope of this analysis.
It is important to notice, that the present analysis does not assess the availability ir quality of child health services in Finland. Rather, it examines how child-related health commitments are articulated or remain implicit within selected EU- and national-level strategy documents and ESF+ funding calls. At the EU-level, previous research has raised concerns regarding the practical realisation of the health-related aims of the ECG, particularly for children in vulnerable situations (Rigby, 2021). These discussions highlight broader challenges in translating child health commitments into concrete measures across governance levels. In this study, references to health-related gaps should therefore be understood as observations about the visibility of such commitments within selected funding frameworks, rather than as assessments of national service provision.
Digitalisation, despite its prominence in national strategies, is not clearly visible in the examined funding calls. This may be since EU-level recommendations have already been extensively operationalised in Finland. Digital competence is embedded in national education steering documents, and the Ministry of Education and Culture, together with the Finnish National Agency for Education, actively promotes digitalisation. Strategic goals include ensuring digital skills for all, fostering innovation, and positioning Finland as a global leader in technology education. These goals are supported by initiatives such as alignment papers on digitalisation in education (see Berisha et al., 2023). Thus, Finland has invested in digitalisation in other forums than funding of ESF+. Despite Finland’s progressive approach to digitalisation, certain risks remain concerning digital safety, as well as the accessibility and equity of increasing digitalised services (cf. Alexopoulou, 2025). In Finland, the entertainment-oriented media use of digitally native children and youth during leisure time may not be in balance with the pedagogical use of digital platforms in education (Mertala, 2020). Investing in the digital skills and safety of vulnerable groups – especially children – would be of considerable importance.
However, from a children’s rights perspective, the absence of these themes within the analysed funding framework remains significant. Funding calls influence what types of development work are prioritised and how children’s needs are conceptualised within institutional boundaries. When certain rights-related themes are consistently omitted from funding instruments framed as promoting inclusion and equality, there is a risk that these issues remain less visible in cross-sectoral development efforts.
Fragmentation, strategic coherence, and accountability
EU child rights strategies function primarily as normative and coordinative instruments: while they articulate shared objectives and principles, responsibility for prioritisation, service organisation, and funding allocation remains largely at the national and sub-national levels, in line with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality.
The ESF+ is the EU’s main instrument for investing in people and supporting the implementation of the European Pillar of Social Rights. With a budget of €142.7 billion for the period 2021–2027, the ESF+ provides a substantial contribution to the EU’s employment, social, education and skills policies, including structural reforms in these areas. (European Commission, n.d.) Given its scale and policy significance, it is justified to examine how ESF+ funding allocation contributes to the operationalisation of key strategic objectives related to children’s rights.
As Rapley (2021) notes, documents do not merely describe realities but actively produces them, and the realities they construct have tangible effect. In this study, these effects are traced through documentary analysis, as they are presumed to have great importance for the realisation and visibility of children’s rights within funding processes.
The analysis revealed that while EU-level strategies provide a broad normative framework, their operationalisation at the national level is shaped by country-specific needs, priorities, and governance structures. Finland’s approach reflects this dynamic: although numerous strategies exist across different administrative levels – European, Nordic, and national – not all are fully integrated into the National Child Strategy, nor is such integration necessarily required. National programming must remain responsive to domestic contexts and policy needs.
However, the fragmented nature of strategic guidance raises questions about coherence, coordination, and accountability in the operationalisation of children’s rights. When multiple strategies intersect without a clear overarching framework, it becomes difficult to assess whether the entirety of the strategic landscape is truly governed or understood by any single actor. From a children’s rights perspective, this fragmentation may pose ethical and practical concerns. If the totality of funding allocated to children is not examined holistically, there is a risk that certain priorities, such as child-friendly justice, remain consistently outside the scope of development funding, not due to deliberate policy choices but because they fall between institutional mandates. Such omissions are particularly relevant in the context of EU-level commitments that emphasise equality among children across Member States.
At the same time, the findings no not suggest that national prioritisation is inherently problematic, nor that EU-level strategies should override domestic decision-making. On the contrary, the localisation of international and European commitments is both necessary and legitimate. However, from a children’s rights perspective, consistent omissions of certain rights-related themes raise concerns about whether all children’s needs are equally visible within funding instruments that explicitly aim to promote inclusion and well-being. The funding priorities observed reflect a view of children primarily as future learners and participants, rather than as rights-holders with immediate and diverse needs.
Finally, these observations raise broader questions about how the best interests of the child and the rights enshrined in the UNCRC are balanced against broader economic, demographic, and political considerations in funding decisions. If allocation decisions are driven primarily by economic imperatives, there is a risk that normative commitments to children’s rights receive less systematic attention. Addressing these tensions requires not uniformity across governance levels, but greater transparency regarding prioritisation and clearer accountability for how children’s rights are operationalised in multi-level funding frameworks.
Differences between EU-level strategies and national or local policy priorities should therefore not be interpreted as failures of implementation. Rather, they may reflect necessary processes of localisation, translation, and adaptation pf children’s rights commitments to distinct social, cultural, and institutional contexts. In this context, concerns about strategic coherence do not imply that domestic demographic or political considerations should be subordinated to EU-level priorities; rather, they highlight the need for transparency regarding how children’s rights considerations are weighed alongside other legitimate national objectives.
