45 Amendments of Elisabetta GUALMINI related to 2023/2811(RSP)
Amendment 1 #
Title 1
European Parliament resolution on ‘Children first – beyondupscaling the Child Guarantee, two years on from its adoption’
Amendment 10 #
Citation 12 a (new)
– having regard to its resolution of 15 December 2022 on upscaling the 2021- 2027 multiannual financial framework: a resilient EU budget fit for new challenges;
Amendment 12 #
Citation 12 b (new)
– having regard to its resolution of 21 January 2021 on access to decent and affordable housing for all
Amendment 14 #
Citation 12 c (new)
– having regard to its resolution of 11 May 2023 on a roadmap towards a social Europe – two years after the Porto Social Summit
Amendment 16 #
Citation 12 d (new)
– having regard to its resolution of 22 June 2022 on "Towards a common European action on care";
Amendment 18 #
Draft motion for a resolution
Citation 12 e (new)
Citation 12 e (new)
– having regard to the Eurofound report “Guaranteeing access to services for children in the EU”1a _________________ 1a Eurofound (2023), Guaranteeing access to services for children in the EU, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publicat ions/policy-brief/2023/guaranteeing- access-to-services-for-children-in-the-eu
Amendment 21 #
Citation 12 f (new)
– having regard to its resolution of 7 April 2022 on EU Protection of children and young people fleeing the war against Ukraine;
Amendment 22 #
Recital -A (new)
-A. whereas the socio-economic situation of children in Europe has worsened firstly as a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, not only in terms of health and social impacts but also due to the lockdown measures taken to control the emergency which resulted in mental health problems, educational gaps and school dropouts, increased violence and abuse against children, but also due to the economic and humanitarian crisis caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which had devastating effects not solely for the millions of refugee children and their families fleeing the war, but for the overall population in the EU, in terms of soaring costs of living, energy prices, inflation, growing inequalities, access to basic services and affordability of healthy food and medicines;
Amendment 23 #
Recital A
A. whereas access to basic services, including effective and free access to high quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) and healthcare, as well as to education, and school-based activities, adequate housing and healthy nutrition plays an important role in breaking the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage and lifting children out of poverty and social exclusion, as it can help to tackle the complex and multifaceted nature of poverty and vulnerability;
Amendment 30 #
Recital B
B. whereas investing in the youngest generation brings the greatest return and contributes to the growth and prosperity of society as a whole; whereas several Member States have allocated more than the requested 5 % of European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) resources to tackling child poverty and 23 Member States have programmed a total of EUR 8.9 billion in ESF+ support to address the issue; whereas however the ESF+ resources alone are in no way sufficient to address the challenge of child poverty in the EU and therefore a significant increase of funding for the European Child Guarantee is of utmost importance; whereas child poverty is a European problem that affects all Member States and should be tackled as such in all Member States with ambitious European and national instruments; whereas the implementation of the ESF+ plans has been delayed, in turn delaying the reforms to be undertaken under the Child Guarantee national action plans (NAPs) and financed through ESF+;
Amendment 38 #
Recital C
C. whereas child poverty and social exclusion remains a key challenge across the EU, given that an average of 1 in 4 children are still at risk of poverty, with the share varying widely between countries – ranging from over 40 % in some countries to 11 % in others (2021 Eurostat data) – and trends are worsening in many countries because of the multiple crises across the EU and globally;
Amendment 41 #
Recital D
D. whereas many more children are bound to befind themselves in a vulnerable situation, not only those living experiencing poverty and social exclusion, but also children living with disabilities, children with a minority racial or ethnic background, children residing in institutionsfrom single parent families, homeless children, children residing in institutions, children without parental care, migrant and refugee children, and so on; whereas improving their lives in the short term and establishing successful life paths for them in the long term requires structural changes and innovative solutions and an inter- sectoral approach at EU, national and local levels;
Amendment 49 #
Recital E
E. whereas the European Child Guarantee is a high-quality and innovative policy instrument with the potential to deliver significant improvements to the everyday reality of millions of children in the EU in a multidimensional way; whereas its objective is to prevent and combat social exclusion by guaranteeing effective access of children in need to a set of key services, such as free early childhood education and care, free education, including school-based activities and at least one healthy meal each school day, free healthcare, healthy nutrition, and adequate housing; whereas the European Union and the Member States should deploy all efforts to turn the European Child Guarantee into reality by fully implementing the Council Recommendation and the National Action Plans (NAPs) and all other European and national programmes which contribute to the delivery of its key services; whereas more needs to be done to achieve a more comprehensive, intersectoral approach to tackling children’s risk of vulnerabilitypoverty and social exclusion and to ensureing a genuine implementation of the Child Guarantee by removing the policy, political, administrative and financial barriers;
Amendment 53 #
Recital F
F. whereas 20 months on from the original deadline of March 2022, 24 Member States have adopted their Child Guarantee NAPs, with a focus on the major areas identified in the associated Council Recommendation; whereas the submitted plans vary significantly among each other with regard to their governance methods, their outreach strategy vis-a-vis the most disadvantaged groups and the way to target them and to monitor progress, the timelines of proposed measures and the budget foreseen to effectively deploy such measures; whereas several plans appear as generic and superficial documents in which policy-makers merely listed measures already put in place or planned;
Amendment 58 #
Recital G
G. whereas in some countries, NAPs have been accompanied by the revision of existing laws in several areas, such as deinstitutionalisation or access to ECEC services; whereas not all NAPs include new measures to address child poverty and social exclusion or have a clear budget, timeline, targets or monitoring mechanism;
Amendment 62 #
Recital J
J. whereas some countries have lacked transparency and have failed to consult children and families, ECEC staff and service providers, and their representative organisations (including non-governmental organisations (NGOs)) when drafting their NAPs;
Amendment 69 #
Recital L
L. whereas some countries have struggled to develop and implement a monitoring framework for their NAPs and do not collect enough data on child poverty and on access to basic services, which should be disaggregated and gathered at both national and subnational level; whereas the lack of standardised guidelines for data collection hinders the monitoring of the implementation of the European Child Guarantee;
Amendment 73 #
Recital L a (new)
La. whereas countries that benefited from technical assistance have developed better quality NAPs, with stakeholders' collaboration and targeted measures for effective access of some of the most disadvantaged groups of children to the basic services;
Amendment 75 #
Recital L b (new)
Lb. whereas Next Generation EU, in particular the Policies for Next Generation Pillar of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans adopted by the Member States under the Recovery and Resilience Facility offer a unique opportunity for significant investments and reforms aimed at improving early childhood education and care, their quality and inclusiveness; whereas the implementation of these measures by the Member States should be closely monitored and should be designed and delivered in synergy with already existing national and European programmes in the field, in particular the Child Guarantee, the European Social Fund Plus and the other European Structural and Investment Funds;
Amendment 77 #
Recital L c (new)
Lc. whereas Europe is facing a severe housing crisis, especially affecting urban areas in many Member States, both wealthy and less wealthy countries alike, where it has become difficult to find affordable housing at market prices, including for middle-income households, leading to social exclusion and spatial segregation; whereas access to decent and affordable housing is harder for vulnerable groups and families and has a dramatic effect on children and their material and psychological well-being; whereas households with children are generally at a higher risk of severe housing deprivation, and the proportion of children living in an overcrowded household is higher for children living in poverty than for the general population; whereas lack of access to social housing is a barrier for income-poor children caused by an insufficient supply of social housing, leading to long waiting times; whereas properly heated housing with safe water and sanitation and housing in general is a key element for children’s health, well-being, growth and development; whereas adequate housing is also conducive to children learning and studying;
Amendment 80 #
Paragraph 2
2. Calls on the Member States to ensure the full implementation of their NAPs and, when reviewing them, to set even more ambitious objectives to tackle child poverty; highlights that the adopted NAPs by Member States are largely heterogeneous among each other when it comes to their governance methods, their outreach strategy vis-a-vis the most disadvantaged groups and the way to target them and to monitor progress, the timelines of proposed measures and the budget foreseen to effectively deploy such measures; warns of the risk that such heterogeneity could bring to the situation of child poverty and social exclusion in Europe, jeopardising the overall objective of the Child Guarantee in achieving upwards social convergence in the EU; regrets in particular that several NAPs do not include measurable objectives and concrete targets, which generates serious concerns when it comes to the quality of measures effectively put in place;
Amendment 88 #
Paragraph 3
3. Calls on the Member States to design a national framework for data collection, monitoring and evaluation for their NAPs, involving participatory research methods, gathering disaggregated data at national and subnational level; invites the Member States to create child poverty observatories to gather high- quality, disaggregated per targeted groups and internationally comparable data at national level;
Amendment 96 #
Paragraph 4
4. Highlights the need for comprehensive and disaggregated data on child poverty and on access to basic services from the Member States, and underlines that the indicators for monitoring child poverty selected by the Indicators subgroup of the Commission’s Social Protection Committee must make it possible to establish a closer link between the European Child Guarantee and the Social Scoreboard;
Amendment 106 #
Paragraph 7
7. Notes that further economic aspects of each NAP must be monitored, particularly national and EU funding, including funding reaching the beneficiaries; highlights in particular the necessity to closely monitor the implementation of National Recovery and Resilience Plans in the field of child poverty, which should be designed and delivered synergistically with dedicated resources of the European Child Guarantee Action Plans and the European Social Fund Plus;
Amendment 109 #
Paragraph 7 a (new)
7a. Highlights that the issue of “value added” of the European Child Guarantee should be given utmost importance, since all resources dedicated to its measures should not simply replace already existing national or European measures but should instead complement them; highlights that the NAPs should not constitute a re-branding or re-packaging of already existing programmes or measures, which would constitute a serious risk for the achievement of the Child Guarantee objectives and would raise concerns with regard to the general principle of additionality of the EU cohesion policy;
Amendment 111 #
Paragraph 8
8. Calls on the Commission to use the mid-term review to support the revision of the NAPs; calls on the Member States to streamline NAPs and create synergies between them and national policies and strategies, notably the National Recovery and Resilience Plans, as well as their funding, in order to ensure that the measures are consistent;
Amendment 122 #
Paragraph 10
10. Notes that take-up of ECEC remains low among low-income families; calls on the Member States to provide more quality places in childcare facilities and to support professional training for ECEC staff; increase significantly the coverage of more quality and affordable childcare facilities and to support training and the improvement of working conditions for ECEC staff as these have an impact in the quality, accessibility and inclusivity of services1b; _________________ 1b Eurofound (2015), Early childhood care: Accessibility and quality of services, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg. https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/sites/def ault/files/ef_publication/field_ef_docume nt/ef1512en.pdf
Amendment 123 #
Paragraph 11
11. Calls on the Member States to increase their efforts to ensure that all children enrolled in education receive at least one free healthy warm meal each school day; highlights that often children in need depend on such meal during school days and therefore invites the Member States to take this into account by introducing measures that ensure that they would not miss out on a meal during their absence from school; such a fundamental necessity; stresses the interconnection between food poverty, malnutrition and eating disorders such as obesity among children and the access to full time at school; invites Member States to implement national strategies to review their school menus to avoid or reduce the usage of processed and transported foods, while also ensuring the monitoring of the safety of the meals and their nutritional value; calls on the Member States to ensure universal access to school canteens which should be recognised as a right for all children in the EU, and affirms the principle that no children in the EU should ever be denied a meal at school, for whichever reason;
Amendment 129 #
Paragraph 12
12. Highlights that in 2021, 5% of low- income households with children had unmet medical needs in the EU1c and that NAPs have identified several unmet needs in the healthcare sector; calls on the Member States to strengthen and adapt their healthcare systems in order to guarantee all children free and equal access to quality services, including dental and psychological services; _________________ 1c Eurofound (2023), Guaranteeing access to services for children in the EU, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg
Amendment 134 #
Paragraph 13
13. Highlights that poor housing is still one of the causes of child poverty, given that it is linked with energy poverty and precarious living conditions; reiterates its call to the Commission and the Member States to make housing one of the cornerstones of the Action Plan of the European Pillar of Social Rights; recalls that EU policies, funding programmes and financing instruments have a great impact on housing markets, the quality of the housing stock and on citizens’ lives; calls on the Commission to urgently develop an integrated EU-level strategy for social, public, non-segregated and affordable housing, creating an enabling framework for national, regional and local authorities to ensure the provision of safe, healthy, accessible and affordable quality housing for all; calls on the Commission, as part of this strategy, to improve its action to engage all levels of governance in fully and consistently implementing the right to decent housing for all; invites the Member States, therefore, to assess and revise their social housing policies and housing benefit systems in order to better cater for the needs of vulnerable families; and children;
Amendment 144 #
Paragraph 14
14. Encourages the Member States to register all children and adolescents regardless of their parents’ administrative status (residence status) in order to decrease the practical and administrative barriers to accessing key servicesdecrease the practical and administrative barriers to accessing key services by keeping procedures simple and accessible, online as well as offline, and by accepting declarations on honor when documents needed for registration cannot be procured;
Amendment 149 #
Paragraph 15
15. Calls on the Member States to promote outreach activities and raise awareness of the European Child Guarantee and the key services that children and families can benefit from; calls for support for cities to establish one-stop shops to provide children and families with targeted support to access information on early detection and Early Childhood Intervention social security and assistance, as well as specific local measures for social inclusion;
Amendment 153 #
Paragraph 15 a (new)
15a. Calls on Member States to ensure that public transport is accessible to all children, including children with disabilities, children living in rural areas, and all children with a migrant background;
Amendment 159 #
Paragraph 16 a (new)
16a. Stresses the necessity for the Member States to invest in social protection systems and policies such as adequate minimum income schemes and minimum wages as a means to sustain most vulnerable households in the EU; calls on all EU Member States to swiftly adopt and implement the Council Recommendation of 30 January 2023 on adequate minimum income ensuring active inclusion and the EU directive on minimum wage to combat poverty and social exclusion in the EU; reiterates that it is essential for income support and minimum income not to contribute to social dependence and that they must rather be combined with incentives and support tools, enabling active labour market measures to (re)integrate those who can work in order to break the vicious circle of poverty and the dependence on public support for individuals and their families; is concerned about the recent decision of the Italian government to drastically curb its minimum income scheme which supported around 3,6 million people especially for its impact on children, going against the overall trend in the EU in the fight against poverty and social exclusion;
Amendment 162 #
Paragraph 16 b (new)
16b. Reiterates its call for a comprehensive and integrated antipoverty strategy with a designated poverty reduction target including for child poverty; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure children’s right to adequate housing is implemented, including by providing related support to parents having difficulties with keeping or accessing housing, so that they can remain with their children, with particular attention on young adults exiting child welfare institutions; calls on the Member States to adopt a specific housing policy for children, based on children-specific data on child homelessness and children's housing exclusion situation; highlights the necessity to facilitate access to social housing by streamlining and simplifying procedures at the national and local level and by significantly increasing public spending on housing, which remains highly fragmented across the EU, and by strengthening financial contribution and subsidies to families in need to make rents more affordable; calls on the Member States to adopt measures to protect vulnerable households with children from evictions, strengthen the presence of social services in the area at higher risk of social exclusion and among marginalised communities;
Amendment 164 #
Paragraph 17
17. Calls for the Member States to ensure consistency between the European Child Guarantee and the reinforced Youth Guarantee in order to cover the entire age span from pregnancy to adulthood; highlights that the European Child Guarantee, like the Youth Guarantee, bears the potential to become a driver for positive structural change in the Member States' ability to plan and deliver key services, strengthen the partnership among institutional actors at the different levels and with civil society organisations and social partners;
Amendment 169 #
Paragraph 18
18. Reiterates its call for an urgent increase in funding for the European Child Guarantee, with a dedicated budget of at least EUR 20 billion for 2021-2027, and insists that this dedicated budget must be made part of the revised multiannual financial framework and reinforced ESF+; invites all Member States, not only those with a povertydeeply regrets that the Commission’s proposal on the MFF mid-term revision does not reflect Parliament’s long- standing demand for an urgent increase in funding for the European Child Guarantee; calls on all Member States, not only those with a "at risk of poverty and social exclusion (AROPE) rate" below 5 %the Union average, to increase their financial efforts andbove the thematic concentration of 5% indicated in the ESF+ and to show greater ambition to invest more in children, given that this is a valuable social investment; highlights that child poverty is a European problem affecting all countries in the EU and calls on the Member States to re-programme their ESF+ national operational programme to dedicate adequate resources for the implementation of the Child Guarantee; highlights the necessity to introduce a binding thematic concentration for all Member States when the ESF+ will be next revised;
Amendment 175 #
Paragraph 19
19. Calls on the Commission to assess the quality of spending on children, in particular to evaluate the effective and consistent use of the EUR 8.9 billion dedicated to the European Child Guarantee under the ESF+, and asks the Commission to propose options for synergies and blending with other sources of funding, notably the ERDF, InvestEU, Next Generation EU and the Recovery and Resilience Facility, AMF, ReactEU, EU4Health and Erasmus+;
Amendment 178 #
Paragraph 19 a (new)
19a. Stresses the necessity to closely monitor the implementation of the investments and reforms under the Policies for the next Generation Pillar of the National Recovery and Resilience Plans adopted by the Member States, with a view to carefully evaluate the achievement of the milestones and targets of the measures aimed at improving the affordability, the quality and the inclusiveness of early childhood education and care services; highlights that in general terms, the reporting obligations of the RRF have resulted in the availability of more detailed and measurable objectives and data on expenditures in this policy area; regrets however that in some cases Member States' authorities have failed to produce sufficiently clear figures on the planned objectives and the measures effectively delivered, for example with regard to the numbers of new places in nurseries and on the increased coverage of early childhood education services; points out to the necessity of guaranteeing financially and from an organisational standpoint the maintenance of the expanded capacity and coverage of early childhood education and care services after the extraordinary investments under the National Recovery and Resilience Plans will be exhausted; stresses the necessity to coordinate the National Recovery and Resilience Plans in this field with the Child Guarantee objectives and with the resources already allocated under the ESF+ and the other European Structural Funds to foster synergies, avoid funding overlaps and ensure a long- term sustainability of the proposed measures;
Amendment 180 #
Paragraph 20
20. Calls on the Member States to ensure that best use is made of available EU and national funds and invites them to explore innovative funding schemes, including public-private partnerships; encourages the Member States to work with the European Investment Bank and invest in social infrastructure dedicated to children; underlines the importance of exempting the investment in the key policies for combatting child poverty and social exclusion from the national spending cuts;
Amendment 188 #
Paragraph 22
22. Calls on the Commission to ensure direct, adequate and easily accessible funding at regional and local level to boost investment in social infrastructure and increase the capacity of local services to pilot new models and solutions to reduce child poverty; highlights the necessity to provide Local and Regional Authorities and Municipalities with adequate support to implement the measures included in the plans, especially in the most rural areas; welcomes the Flexible Assistance to Territories (FAST-CARE) model that provides funding to local authorities and civil society organisations and notes that it should become a wider model in the revision of the MFF;
Amendment 196 #
Paragraph 23
23. Calls on the Member States to involve all relevant stakeholders at all levels in the revision and implementation of their NAPs in order to build solid partnerships that can strengthen and expand ownership and commitment; highlights the importance of involving civil society, ECEC staff and service providers and children in developing and implementing the monitoring and evaluation framework;
Amendment 200 #
Paragraph 24
24. Calls for the Member States to support local partnerships for children, between municipality-led services and other service providers, local communities, parents and children, schools, charities, social partners, NGOs and private-sector actors, in order to maximise resources for the implementation of the European Child Guarantee; notes that local partnerships should ensure a participatory approach to developing, implementing and monitoring the local Child Guarantee and guarantee that responsibility for this is shared; suggests the establishment of a technical assistance facility for local and regional authorities and municipalities to increase their capacity to plan and deliver Child Guarantee related services and to maximise the potential of EU funds in this field;
Amendment 203 #
Paragraph 25
25. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to draw up a solid governance framework at EU and national levels, ensuring a successful and integrated interplay between the Child Guarantee, national framework and strategies, and the EU social and equity agenda – including the European Semester; highlights the need for multi- level governance, with joint responsibility and coordinated strategies between local, regional, national and EU levels, to prevent and mitigate child poverty;
Amendment 207 #
Paragraph 26
26. Highlights that national coordinators need to receive adequate leverage and financial and human resources to effectively coordinate the implementation of the NAPs; highlights that Member States have appointed as national coordinators very different profiles, some being external experts, others being high-profile figures at the ministerial level; a heterogeneity which should not result in uneven results in the delivery of the European Child Guarantee; stresses the crucial role of national coordinators within the governance of the European Child Guarantee, notably in their function and responsibility to coordinate strategies between local, regional, national and EU levels; calls for these coordinators to duly report every two years on the progress made on all aspects of the Child Guarantee and to regularly exchange best practices with their national counterparts; calls on the Commission to ensure reinforced institutional coordination;