Justice and Consumers

The new European Commission started its mandate on 1 December 2024. President Ursula von der Leyen was re-elected for her second mandate and the college of Commissioners was confirmed after hearings by the European Parliament. Glenn Micallef is the Commissioner for Intergenerational Fairness, Youth, Culture and Sport and is responsible for the implementation of the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child, for an action plan against cyberbullying and for synergies between youth participation and child participation actions.

The Platform has a new Work Plan 2025-2026 adopted by the Advisory Board on 2 December 2024, a new video from the meeting, videos form the Create, Plan, Participate meeting that took place in June 2004, the children’s version of the Recommendation on Integrated child protection systems and the report from the consultation on democracy. Visit the website to see all these and read information about the Platform, its events co-designed and co-facilitated by children and documents co-produced by children.

On 4 March 2025, Maria Luís Albuquerque, Commissioner for Financial Services and the Savings and Investments Union, will host a 2-hour conversation with young people from the European Union. The topic will be the future of finance. If you would like to take part – and you are a European citizen aged 18 to 30 with an interest in finance – you just need to submit a short video (up to 1 minute) addressing one or several of the questions posted on the website.

To mark World Mental Health Day (10 October), the Commission published an updated Tracking Framework on the Communication on a comprehensive approach to mental health together with an EU Support Package on Stigma and a media awareness campaign (#InthisTogether) that focuses on tackling stigma and discrimination around anxiety and depression, which is particularly focused on young people. A joint event (organised by SANTE, WHO-Europe, Mental Health Europe) which was held 20 October 2024 on mental health stigma and discrimination.

The Safer Internet Forum 2024 was held in Brussels and on-line on 21 November. For those who might wish to revisit some of the discussions of the day, the recordings from the various sessions, the report and other outputs are available on the Better Internet for Kids (BIK) public platform.

Eurostat’s put up data a new informative infographic, which covers topics such as education, health, living conditions and more on children and young people in the EU.

The CERV-2025-CHILD call is published, with an unprecedented budget of 17 million EUR. The call covers three priorities: Children’s rights in the digital age (including promoting children's digital literacy, raising awareness of children’s rights online and reducing the negative impact of digital use on children's well-being), Children’s engagement and participation, to complement the work of EU Children’s Participation Platform, and Embedding a rights of the child perspective in actions at national and local level, to mainstream children’s rights across the EU. The call will open for submission on 16 January 2025 with deadline 29 April 2025.

The objective of these calls is to select and support European networks, civil society organisations active at EU level and European think tanks in the areas of Union values, including networks active in the field of promoting and protecting the rights of the child and children’s right to participate, as well as in combating violence against children. The budget for the Specific Operating Grant (SGA) call 2025 is 36 million EUR. The deadline to apply for funding is 28 January 2025 for the Framework Partnership (FPA) call and 5 February 2025 for the SGA call.

The Pilot Youth Advisory Panel (Pilot Panel), launching in 2025, will include seven young people (aged 18–25) with experience in civil society organisations or youth advocacy. They will advise FRA’s Director on future (strategic) priorities, as well as planned and ongoing activities. This pilot group will test and refine the structures and procedures for the Youth Advisory Panel planned to be launched as a permanent initiative in 2027.

European Parliament to mark the 35th anniversary of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child held a held a public hearing to discuss the Rights of the Child in the EU external policies. The first session focused on the implementation of the Convention's articles in the EU's external policies. The second session concerned the protection of children affected by armed conflicts. In her remarks, Ewa Kopacz, the EP Coordinator on Children’s Rights highlighted that children in conflict zones bear a disproportionate burden of suffering and trauma caused by the violence, which continues into adulthood and impacts the entire societies that today’s children will build in the future.

The European Parliament Intergroup on Children's Rights was re-established in the new parliamentary term (2024 – 2029). The Intergroup is composed of members of the European Parliament belonging to different political groups and coming from various countries. They promote and mainstream children's rights in the European Parliament.

A high-level event on child participation took place in Malta on 20 November to celebrate the world children’s day, the 35th birthday of the UNCRC and a closure of an Empowering Children's Participation Project (funded by EU under Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values programme). The event was opened by Hon. Michael Falzon, Minister for Social Policy and Children’s Rights with child participation. The project includes capacity building for policy makers, consultations with children, a mobile application for children to share their views and a toolkit on assessing the impact of child participation, developed by by Laura Lundy and children. The project was implemented by the Ministry for Social Policy and Children’s Rights, in collaboration with University College Cork and the Office of the Commissioner for Children in Malta.

The EU-funded JOURNEYS project held its closing project events in November 2024 highlighting children’s right to information and participation in the Barnahus context which included a Journeys webinar 5: A safe and informed Barnahus journey for children and a final conference held as a hybrid event in Linköping, Sweden on 20th November 2024.

Youth delegates from the DAY project: Empowering Child Participation in Naples, met with the European Commission’s DG JUST Child Rights Team in Brussels. For the past 18 months, Eurochild in collaboration with its local member Fondazione l’Albero della Vita, and partner CIDIS, has implemented the Democratic Activation of Youth (DAY) project in Naples, Italy. This EU-funded initiative, part of the Citizen Equality Rights and Values (CERV) programme, has engaged children (14 to 18 years old) in local governance, giving them a voice in decision-making processes that affect their lives.

Missing Children Europe has recently launched two new projects: the LGBTIQ+ Missing Children and the GUARD-UP project. The first one is carried out in partnership with IGLYO and the University of Portsmouth and seeks to understand the experiences of LGBTIQ+ youth who go missing and the impact of intersectional discrimination. The GUARD-UP project addresses the need to strengthen the support offered to guardians of unaccompanied migrant children. One crucial aspect is training them to effectively respond to the needs of vulnerable children, including those at risk of missing.

Within this EU co-funded project, SOS Children’s Villages has worked with children and young people in Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, and Spain to empower and enable them to participate meaningfully in public decision-making on all topics that affect them.

IMCITIZEN is a project funded by the EU's CERV-2022-CHILD programme. It promotes the identity of democratic citizenship of children as active and committed members of their municipalities. IMCITIZEN seeks systemic changes so that child participation mechanisms have a significant impact on public policies and on the education of children's civic and democratic identity.

The CFJ-EN held its third annual seminar between 10-11 October 2024 in Brussels and brought together experts from academia, practice, and policy to explore how climate change challenges children’s rights and access to justice. Organised in partnership with Terre des hommes Foundation (Tdh), Justice With Children, CICS.NOVA, and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), the event provided a forum for discussions on strategic climate litigation and children’s rights to freedom of assembly, building on recommendations from Terre des Hommes’ 2023 report, "Climate In-justice for Children: How climate crisis affects access to justice and children’s rights.

Eurochild’s Convention marking their 20th anniversary of fighting for children’s rights and tackling poverty in Europe was held in in Malta on 2-3 July 2024. The focus was "Fostering Rights-Based Solutions to Tackle Child Poverty and Social Exclusion across Europe". The event, co-hosted by Eurochild and the Malta Foundation for the Wellbeing of Society, featured 15 workshops and study visits.

On the occasion of its 78th anniversary, UNICEF released a new report with updated global and regional estimates on birth registration as well as an overview of progress toward achieving universal birth registration for every child. The right to be recognized as a person before the law is a critical step in ensuring lifelong protection and is a prerequisite for exercising all other rights. This publication draws from more than 500 data sources spanning a period of more than 20 years to present updated global and regional estimates of the number of unregistered children under age 5 and under age 1. In addition, it assesses progress over time and presents evidence for the amount of effort that will be needed – at both global and regional levels – to ensure that all children have a legal identity.

UNICEF's report on Confronting the global scale of sexual violence against children presents the first-ever global and regional estimates of sexual violence against children, revealing the magnitude of this human rights violation worldwide. The publication stresses that sexual violence against children is pervasive, cutting across geographical, cultural and economic boundaries. But the scale of this has long been difficult to quantify.

To mark 2024’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, Eurochild published a documentary that sheds light on how children and young people growing up in poverty or social exclusion can actively shape their communities. It showcases the inspiring achievements and visionary ideas of three young people representing over 2,000 high school students that participated in our EU funded Democratic Activation of Youth (DAY) Project in Naples, Italy.

The First Ministerial Global Conference on Ending Violence against Children was held in Bogotá, Colombia, 7-8 November 2024. To advance a collective ambition to end violence against children, representatives from governments and other partners from around the world committed to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development including Goal Target 16.2. It seeks to end abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children. The participants called for the effective implementation of all relevant international and regional instruments to which a state is party and encourage their ratification by those countries that have not yet done so, to finally end violence against children everywhere, in partnership with children and in their best interests.

To mark the International Day of Care and Support, SOS Children’s Villages launched a Global Report on Children’s Care and Protection, focusing on understanding and preventing the separation of children from their families. This report provides insights into the factors leading to the separation of children from their families and offers evidence-based recommendations on how governments and stakeholders can uphold every child’s right to grow up in a family environment. Drawing on global and national research, including new data from eight countries, the report incorporates the perspectives of over a thousand children, young people, families, and child protection professionals. It highlights critical gaps in child protection and social support services and provides recommendations for creating more inclusive, integrated care systems—especially in contexts of poverty, inequality, and violence.

The report published by COPE gathered directly views from children across ten countries (nine EU Member States), highlighting critical areas that require attention to make prisons more accommodating for children. Structured to highlight key findings and recommendations, the report outlines the changes that children wish to see and the common issues in prisons they want addressed. COPE advocates for significant changes that will enhance the well-being of children visiting their parents in prison and strengthen the child-parent bond. The report is a call to action for policymakers and prison administrations to create more compassionate and child-friendly environments.

The Guidance for policy makers and practitioners on regularisation mechanisms for people transitioning into adulthood addresses one on the key reasons why children and young people enter undocumented adulthood. It delves into how procedures and permits can be designed to work better for children and young people. Stepping up: a collection of projects and practices helping migrant children transition into adulthood highlights 25 practices and projects supporting children and young people across the region. It includes chapters on housing, mental health and peer support, mentoring, care and aftercare, legal aid, ‘figuring things out’, regularising one’s stay, cross-border exchanges, outreach work. Both publications are available in English, French, Greek and Italian

The Council of Baltic Sea States and Child Circle published a Guidance, Creating a Cycle of Protection: Guiding principles and key considerations for developing comprehensive, child-centred cooperation to identify, support and assist trafficked children. As Member States take action to implement these new measures at national level, the Guidance encourages and supports them to take the necessary action to prioritise and respond effectively to the needs and rights of trafficked children.

This latest report records a 25% increase in the number of trafficking victims detected globally in 2022 compared to 2019 pre-pandemic figures. Between 2019 and 2022, the global number of victims detected for trafficking for forced labour surged by 47% The global number of detected child victims increased 31% in 2022 compared to 2019, with a 38% rise recorded for girls. More boy victims have been detected in areas where increasing numbers of unaccompanied and separated children had been recorded. Child trafficking is also on the rise in high-income countries, often involving girls trafficked for sexual exploitation. The Report finds that women and girls continue to account for the majority of victims detected worldwide (61% in 2022). The majority of girl victims (60% detected continue to be trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation. Some 45% of detected boys are trafficked for forced labour and another 47% are exploited for other purposes, including forced criminality and begging.