29/01/2009
PES: don't let the Czech Presidency ditch EU child care targets
A Czech Presidency proposal to open debate about the relevance of EU child care targets has provoked strong opposition from European socialists.
The proposal is contained in a discussion paper due to be considered at an informal meeting of EU Family Ministers on 5 February in Prague. The paper, while raising all sorts of questions about the targets, does not even acknowledge the possibility of stepping up efforts to fulfill the targets or extending the targets to include qualitative as well as quantitative measures. In 2002 the EU Summit in Barcelona agreed national targets of pre-school child care places for 33% of under three year olds and 90% of children three-school age by 2010.
In 2007 the Party of European Socialists ran a campaign to encourage governments to fulfill their commitment to EU targets for child care places, and child care features in the PES 'Principles for a New Social Europe'.
PES Women Executive issued a statement this week saying they "strongly oppose any watering down of the EU child care targets."
Zita Gurmai, President of PES Women said "The EU should be looking at how it could help member states to increase the quantity and quality of child care, not trying to ditch targets just because some member states are failing to achieve their commitments. It is important that the EU encourages its member states to improve public services."
PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen said "At the start of the Czech Presidency the President of the Czech Republic wrote that the EU should be cutting social and environmental standards. Now we see the Czech Presidency are trying to put that into practice. It is totally unacceptable that the Czech conservatives want Europe to drop child care targets when people are already suffering job and pension cuts. I challenge the European conservatives - the EPP - to say where they stand. Do they want to enable conservative member states to start forcing mothers back to the home or oblige even more working parents to pay for expensive private child care?"
The PES is calling on anyone who cares for child care to protest to the Czech - click here to find out more
