Eurochild have released a report that assesses the progress made by Member States towards improving child wellbeing.

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How do children’s rights and child poverty feature in the annual European Semester cycle?

Published by Eurochild (a network that aims to advocate for children’s rights and wellbeing in EU-wide policymaking), ‘New opportunities for investing in children’ examines how child poverty and children’s rights featured in the 2019 European Semester.

The European Semester is an annual cycle implemented by the European Commission which aims to coordinate and monitor Member States’ economic policies and progress towards the Europe 2020 strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth, including goals and objectives around social exclusion. Elements of the Semester include the production of reports and Country Specific Recommendations (CSRs) for each Member State.

‘Alternative’ children-centric country profiles and recommendations

The report considers that the existing European Semester Cycle does not sufficiently focus on issues affecting children.The report therefore offers country profiles and recommendations with an explicit focus on policies around children and families, which can be seen to serve as an ‘alternative’ to the traditional profiles and recommendations produced by the European Semester.

Each written by a national organisation within the Eurochild network, the profiles and recommendations provided in this report have a particular focus on prioritising children and examining the progress of Member States towards implementing the 2013 Recommendation for Investing in Children and the European Pillar of Social Rights. These profiles and recommendations can also be explored using an online interactive map.

Based on these profiles, the report describes four main findings and future priorities:

• More attention should be paid to child poverty and to the wellbeing of particularly vulnerable children in the European Semester and by Member States.
• More focus on the quality and accessibility of ECEC (as well as participation rates) is needed in CSRs to prompt improvement in Member States.
• Some Member States require more support in developing family- and community-based alternative care.
• Child participation strategies that are based on good practice need to be further  developed in some Member States.

The report includes several recommendations for future European Semester cycles, including that issues relating to children should be more explicitly included in the policy framework following Europe 2020. Furthermore, the report recommends that the social dimension of policies, and especially child well-being, become a more specific focus of analysis in the European Semester country reports and the resulting CSRs.

EPIC also works to disseminates research and learning on child wellbeing

Set up as a means to monitor activities triggered by the Recommendation for Investing in Children, the European Platform for Investing in Children (EPIC) is deeply invested in monitoring the best of policy making for children and families and fostering cooperation and mutual learning in the field.

One way in which EPIC does this is by the publication of dedicated policy memos, including those on the use of EU funding mechanisms to alleviate child poverty and the extent to which children's rights are promoted and taken into account in policies and practices.