The main challenges identified by the CSRs of 2013 and 2014 focus on unemployment, with particular attention paid to youth unemployment, which highlights the limited scope of active labour market policies and the need to improve the quality of vocational education. Considering the high working age poverty level, a need to reform social assistance and to improve social security system remains among main challenges. Latvia addresses these challenges in the Partnership Agreement by focusing on: - promoting stable, quality employment and supporting labour mobility; - promoting social inclusion and combating poverty; - investing in education, skills and lifelong learning; and - enhancing institutional capacity of public institutions and stakeholders and efficient public administration. The relevant IPs are established and the main focus is on the need to increase the employability of people. Amongst others, the following target groups are addressed more specifically within most of the IPs: youth, the long-term unemployed, and various disadvantaged groups. All challenges are aligned with the respective IPs. There are ten IPs activated in the Latvian OP that are funded by ESF. It has to be mentioned that in Latvia the TOs also contain activities funded by ERDF, thus ensuring higher synergy and leverage. For example, the TO10 has an IP 10i "Investing in education, training and vocational training for skills and lifelong learning by developing education and training infrastructure" that is funded by ERDF, also the TO9 has an IP funded by ERDF. The Latvian OP has an ESF budget of 638,555,428 Euro. This amount includes the part of ESF co-financing to the YEI (29 010 639 Euro). The YEI funding (29 010 639 Euro) is not included in the total ESF amount. The highest share of ESF is committed to the TO9 and TO10. Within the TO9, there is an emphasis on facilitating the inclusion of both disadvantaged unemployed people, and people at risk of discrimination, in the labour market. A large amount of funding is targeted at improving both the quality and access to the health care and social services. TO10 focuses on improving the quality, efficiency and access to education and training services. TO8 tackles an important challenge of improving access to employment for job seekers, the unemployed and youth. TO11 contains one IP funded by ESF, which is aimed at improving institutional capacity and the efficiency of public administration and public services with a view to better regulation and good governance. The Latvian OP, in terms of activities covered by relevant IPs, fully complies with the CSR recommendations. The selection of actions is grounded in targeting youth and disadvantaged groups in several IPs. Some of the IPs, such as 8v and 9i, are foreseeing a more integrated approach by combining different activities. Overall the activities are well targeted and clear. The output indicators are clear, but could be better defined in terms of showing the scope of intended change. For the purpose of this analysis no information was found in documents annexed to the OP that would allow the screening of the methodology used for target setting; however this information is well explained in other documents, such as "indicator passports" for each specific objective. In the OP of Latvia, the target values for output indicators are not disaggregated by gender. There is a large share of target values for Latvia's output indicators that are classified under the category "other". This is due to a rather wide scope of activities being covered by the IPs and, for some SOs, there are many rather specific output indicators.
