EU Progress Report 2016

In the area of social inclusion and protection, the adoption of amendments to the social welfare law, the family law and the draft law on financial support for families with children are still pending.

On rights of the child, the national plan of action for children expired in 2015. The National Council on the Rights of the Child remained inactive. Ensuring more effective coordination of the child protection system should be prioritised and efforts made to ensure uniform implementation of policy. Administrative data are still not disaggregated to enable monitoring of vulnerable groups, particularly Roma and children with disabilities. There is a need to

organise assistance to children living and/or working on the street on a local level. Violence against children remains a serious concern. A new national strategy for the prevention of and protection of children from violence still need to be developed. There is a need to align the legal framework and statistics with international standards on child abuse. Children with disabilities in large institutions face particular difficulties as regards access to education.

Additional mechanisms need to be put in place to secure full implementation of the legislation regulating juvenile offenders and child victims in criminal proceedings. Prevention programmes and programmes for reintegrating juvenile offenders into the community are only available in large cities and are funded on a project basis. Better protection for child victims who testify in criminal proceedings should be ensured through the provision of units for child victim protection.