Czech Government suspends negotiations on the future of the Agency for Social Inclusion: Financing proposal will be changed, the decision will be made next week

According to the press spokesperson for the Ministry of Regional Development, Karolína Nová, the ministers agreed on the need to continue interministerial collaboration on this issue, but the details regarding the financing of the Agency have yet to be decided. “The Government has suspended those negotiations and will likely return to them with an adjusted proposal for financing the Agency’s work next week. Generally, however, the ministries did express their support for interministerial collaboration on addressing social exclusion in the regions during the cabinet session,” Nová told news server Romea.cz.

The information that the Government will return to the proposal first thing next week was also confirmed to news server Romea.cz by the press spokesperson for the Government of the Czech Republic, Lucie Ješátková. “Details on the negotiations themselves and the resulting form of the proposal will be provided once it is approved,” she said.

News server Romea.cz has tried reaching out to the director of the Agency for Social Inclusion, Martin Šimáček; the Czech Government Commissioner for Roma Minority Affairs, Lucie Fuková; Vice-Chair of the Czech Government Council for Roma Minority Affairs, Marián Dancso; and the director of the RomanoNet organization, Michal Miko, for comment. None of them wanted to comment on the current situation.

“I have no information about that,” Dancso told Romea.cz, a sentiment that was echoed by Commissioner Fuková.

The Agency is currently financed through EU and Norway Grants projects – the Government is considering whether to finance it directly from the Czech state budget

The decision on the Agency’s future financing and form will have a fundamental impact on how it works after 2025. The proposal for that and its preparations were decided in May of 2023.

In a press release, the Government said that an assessment of the Agency’s activity had revealed that it is not possible to address social exclusion through temporary projects and that it would be necessary to review the Agency’s legal form, its competencies, and its position vis-a-vis ministries and self-administering territorial units. The resulting material was submitted by Czech Regional Development Minister Ivan Bartoš (Pirates) and Czech Labor Minister Marian Jurečka (Christian Democrats – KDU-ČSL) to the cabinet.

Those ministries never published that material. According to the Czech News Agency (ČTK), the document proposed various solutions.

One of those options could be attenuating the Agency’s activity. “The Agency has long been financed through projects from the EU Structural Funds; the Government will focus on options for financing it from the Czech state budget. The material also proposes bringing 46.5 systematized jobs from the project that is now ending into the Czech state budget,” Nová said ahead of Wednesday’s cabinet session.

According to the most recently published Annual Report, in 2021 the Agency received CZK 380,000 [EUR 15,000] from the Czech state budget, of which it drew CZK 25,300 [EUR 1,000]. From EU funds it received a total of CZK 77.5 million [EUR 3 million] and CZK 10.1 million [EUR 400,000] from Norway Grants.

The Czech state paid for 11 of the Agency’s 106 employees and 145 contractors. According to its website, the Agency is working in 109 municipal departments and municipalities.

The Agency uses what it calls a coordinated approach in more than one area. It aids municipalities with developing applications for EU subsidies distributed by the Education Ministry, Labor Ministry and Ministry for Regional Development.

According to a spokesperson, during the last four years, the Agency has aided the development of more than 400 projects costing as much as CZK 3 billion [EUR 120 million]. The Agency also compiles the Index of Social Exclusion.

Last year there were 241 municipalities with excluded localities where a high proportion of people live on welfare who are involved in collections proceedings, are unemployed, and are uneducated. That number was 50 more municipalities than the year before.

Almost 4 % of the country’s 6,258 towns and villages are grappling with more serious problems of this kind. The Union of Towns and Municipalities is inclined toward ratcheting down the Agency’s work.

The Union said previously that the Agency collaborates with just a fraction of the municipalities which have problems and that its solutions for exclusion are not effective or systemic. It has recommended redirecting the money now spent on the Agency into social work.

Romani leaders criticize the Agency: Is the involvement of the Roma just a formality? Director Šimáček rejects that allegation.

In the context of the discussion on the future of the Agency, Romani leaders recently sent a letter to the Czech Prime Minister in which they criticized the allegedly insufficient involvement of Romani people in the Agency’s activity. The letter, signed by Marián Dancso, Vice-Chair of the Czech Government Council on Roma Minority Affairs and by Michal Miko, director of the RomanoNet umbrella organization, conveys the perspective of the volunteer civil society members of the Czech Government Council on Roma Minority Affairs and the organizations which are part of RomanoNet, observing that Romani participation in the Agency’s decision-making processes is allegedly just formal and insufficient.

The director of the Agency, Martin Šimáček, has responded to that criticism. In a statement for news server Romea.cz he called the criticism untruthful and emphasized that the Agency actively involves Romani people in its projects and works to benefit Romani communities.

According to Šimáček, the Agency has long contributed to solving the problems of social exclusion and has many successful projects behind it.