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On the 14th of June 2021, EU Member States took a historic decision by unanimously adopting the Council Recommendation establishing the European Child Guarantee. By calling on EU Member States to guarantee access to basic rights and services for children in need, this ambitious and innovative framework represents a landmark step forward in protecting the rights of children growing up in poverty and social exclusion in the EU. Moreover, the approval by unanimity demonstrates the commitment of all 27 Member States to tackle child poverty within the EU. The EU Alliance for Investing in Children, which is part of, positively welcomed the adoption of the Child Guarantee. In particular, the EU Alliance was pleased to notice that most of its requests made over the last years were included in the final text of the Recommendation.

The national plans are expected to be submitted to the European Commission by March 2022 and should outline how each Member State will implement the Child Guarantee until 2030. With this statement, the Alliance provides key recommendations to national authorities on drafting the Child Guarantee national action plans to ensure the design of ambitious and comprehensive plans, taking into account the specific challenges of each Member State, and in meaningful consultation with relevant national stakeholders.

The EU Alliance urges EU Member States to:

1. Ensure that the Child Guarantee national action plans target all children in need and that no child is left behind;
2. Ensure that the Child Guarantee action plans take a comprehensive approach to addressing child poverty and social exclusion by promoting measures to support parents;
3. Ensure that EU funds and national budgets are mobilised to adequately support the Child Guarantee action plans;
4. Set ambitious targets and sub-targets to tackle child poverty;
5. Set a national framework for data collection and a set of indicators that will take the most vulnerable into account. The monitoring of the Child Guarantee should feed into the European Semester process ;
6. Ensure meaningful consultations with multispectral stakeholders, children, and parents for the designation of the targeted groups of children and the design of the action plans.