4 new Flash Reports prepared by the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) are now available and provide information on recent social policy developments in Croatia, France, Hungary and Malta.

• Three Croatian trade unions, dissatisfied with the recent pension reform, have collected an impressive number of signatures for a referendum concerning: lowering of the pensionable age for old-age pensions (from 67 to 65), reducing the retirement age for long-term insured persons (from 61 to 60), allowing early retirement at 60 years of age (instead of 62), and reducing the penalties for early retirement.
• Six months after the launch of a national consultation, the Libault Report (issued in March 2019) finally paves the way for the much-needed reform of the French long-term care system. The Report reflects the diverse opinions of the stakeholders concerned and contains 175 measures. It presents “loss of autonomy” as a social risk to be integrated into social security funding legislation and will be used as a background document for the legislative reform of long-term care policy scheduled for the end of 2019.
• Hungary has extended its cash benefit system to support families providing home care to permanently ill or disabled relatives with a new allowance: the home nursing allowance for children. The new allowance is an important move towards the recognition of family home care as an official job.
• Services for young drug and alcohol abusers used to be absent in Malta, resulting in situations where young people were treated with adults, at times by being sent to prison or housed in Malta’s mental hospital. The creation of a new therapeutic centre for adolescents through close state-church cooperation will soon fill this important gap as it will provide young people with specialised rehabilitation services.