Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Spain, Belgium and Hungary sign declaration on fighting child poverty - Can they convince other EU member states to follow?


The conference "Who Cares? Roadmap for a Recommendation to fight child poverty" organized by the Belgian EU presidency in cooperation with the King Baudouin Foundation, UNICEF and Eurochild, ended on September 3rd with the three EU presidencies signing a declaration calling for the EU to give particular priority to child poverty and well-being, especially in this period of economic crisis.

The declaration was signed by Belgian Secretary of State for social integration and combating poverty and conference host, Philippe Courard, Juan Carlos Mato Gomez from the Spanish Ministry of Health and Social Policy, and Hungarian Secretary of State in charge of child poverty Zoltán Balog.

The Belgian Presidency has placed child poverty and well-being as a top priority. This declaration is an important step towards a Recommendation at EU level that will set policy objectives and monitoring mechanisms to measure progress across the EU27.
EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, László Andor committed in his video message on Thursday to adopt a Recommendation in 2011. The supportive declaration from the trio EU Presidency will give an important boost.


Eurochild now calls all European Citizens to support their campaign "End Child Poverty" which has as objective to put pressure Europe's political leaders to support the EU Recommendation against child poverty.

Visit
endchildpoverty.eu and sign the petition.