Right to good living, education and health
All children have a right to a good standard of living, to equal opportunities and support when needed. Still, too many children live at the risk of poverty and social exclusion, struggle with accessing medical services or can not go to school.
The European Commission has tackled this challenges through:
- Gender Equality Strategy 2020-2025
- Action plan on Integration and Inclusion 2021-2027
- 2013 Commission Recommendation ‘Investing in Children: breaking the cycle of disadvantage’ (2013/112/EU)
- The European Pillar of Social Rights
- Council Recommendation on A Bridge to Jobs – Reinforcing the Youth Guarantee
- Communication Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan, COM(2021) 44 final, 2021
- School fruit, vegetables and milk scheme, European Commission
- EU Action Plan on Childhood Obesity (2014-2020), European Commission
- Communication A Farm to Fork Strategy for a fair, healthy and environmentally-friendly food system COM(2020) 381 final
- Council Recommendation on strengthened cooperation against vaccine-preventable diseases (2018/C 466/01)
EU actions to fight poverty, promote inclusive and and child-friendly societies, health and education systems
Under the new EU Strategy on the rights of the child, the Commission committed to:
- establish a European Child Guarantee;
- ensure the complementarity with the European Strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities to respond to the needs of children with disabilities and provide better access to mainstream services and independent living.
- step-up the implementation of the Council Recommendation to strengthen EU cooperation on vaccine-preventable diseases;
- provide information and exchange of best practices to address children’s mental health, via the Best Practice Portal and the Health Policy Platform;
- review the EU school scheme legal framework to refocus on healthy and sustainable food;
- develop best practices and a voluntary code of conduct to reduce online marketing to children of products high in sugar fat and salt within the Joint Action on Implementation of Validated Best Practices in Nutrition;
- propose in 2022, the revision of the Barcelona targets to support further upward convergence among Member States of participation in early childhood education and care;
- propose a Council recommendation on online and distance learning in primary and secondary education;
- propose a new initiative “Pathways to School Success”, that will also contribute to decouple educational attainment and achievement from social, economic and cultural status;;
- set up an expert group for creating supportive learning environments for groups at risk of underachievement and supporting well-being at school;
- support Member States in implementing the 2020 Council Recommendation on VET for sustainable competitiveness, social fairness and resilience
- Promote the Toolkit for inclusion in early childhood education and care