Five new Flash Reports prepared by the European Social Policy Network (ESPN) are now available and provide information on recent social policy developments in France, Luxembourg, North Macedonia, Sweden and the UK.

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• The Government of Luxembourg made two important announcements in the January and February meetings of the Parliamentary committee in charge of family policy: an indexation mechanism for child benefits will be reintroduced and the Law on Child Benefits will be amended to bring it into line with a 2020 judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union. Possible solutions were discussed with Parliamentarians, but no draft law has been presented so far.
   
• As a result of the widespread impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of North Macedonia modified the criteria for access to unemployment insurance. This enhanced access to financial compensation for citizens who lost their job due to the crisis was only enabled in the first wave of the crisis (April-May 2020) and has not been prolonged since.
   
• In France, the triple ambition of the act “For the freedom to choose one’s professional future”, adopted in 2018, was to align social protection for employed and self-employed workers, make career paths more secure for the self-employed, and reform the unemployment insurance scheme. The complexity of the scheme coupled with the COVID-19 crisis have led to a non-take-up of unemployment benefits by the self-employed of almost 90%. The end of the crisis should lead to a major adjustment of this scheme to maintain its original objectives.
   
• The Swedish government has launched a process to implement a joint IT management system for municipal welfare services, in order to free up resources, create a better working environment, and improve services. The legal, financial, and organisational hurdles are now being investigated, and the debate will likely intensify after this analysis.
   
• In the UK, means-tested child tax credits, housing benefit and universal credit child payments has been restricted since April 2017 to only the first two children in the family. Evidence is accumulating on its impact on child poverty and abortions.

The ESPN Flash Reports reflect the views only of the authors, and the European Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information they contain.