Subject: Child Guarantee initiative
Paradoxically, in Europe, which is currently one of the wealthiest regions of the world, as many as 20 million children live at or below the poverty line. In some countries more than one in four children live in extreme deprivation and in many countries children are more at risk of poverty than other citizens.
In its reports, Parliament has, more than once, called on the Commission and Council to consider the possibility for the EU to establish a means of combating child poverty — an EU ‘Child Guarantee’ initiative.
Does the Council not think that it is necessary to develop a Child Guarantee system with special funding (similar to the Youth Guarantee) in order to ensure that no child will be forgotten and that all children living in poverty can benefit from free medical check-ups, free education, decent housing, and proper nutrition?
Reply
(10 December 2018)
The Council has not discussed the question of whether the European Commission should develop proposals for a Child Guarantee. However, in its conclusions on ‘Integrated early childhood development policies as a tool for reducing poverty and promoting social inclusion’, adopted on 21 June 2018, the Council invited the Commission, in line with the division of competences laid down in the Treaties, to promote the implementation of child-related principles of the European Pillar of Social Rights and in particular on the right to protection from poverty (1).
In those conclusions, the Council also encouraged the Member States to make better use of European Structural and Investments Funds (ESIF), and especially the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), depending on national circumstances and policy agendas in order to implement policies for preventing and combating child poverty and social exclusion.
The European Pillar of Social Rights, proclaimed in 2017, calls for poverty to be fought from a rights-of-the-child perspective, by declaring in its principle 11 that children have the right to affordable early childhood education and care of good quality, that children have the right to protection from poverty, and that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have the right to specific measures to enhance equal opportunities.
The Honourable Member is reminded that the Council can only act in its legislative capacity upon a proposal of the European Commission.