Implementation of the European Child Guarantee

This text served as base for an article that was first published in FORUM Jugendhilfe 02/2024 (in German), July 2024

1 Introduction and background

The European Child Guarantee is a voluntary commitment by EU member states to improve the situation of poor children and children at risk of poverty by 2030. In Germany, it is being put in place through the National Action Plan “New Opportunities for Children” and the accompanying implementation process.
Child poverty continues to be a problem in the European Union, one of the richest regions in the world. In 2022, the proportion of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE indicator) in the EU was 24.7%. However, the figures vary significantly between EU countries. Romania (41.5%), Bulgaria (33.9%) and Spain (32.2%) have the highest numbers, while Slovenia (10.3%), the Czech Republic (13.4%) and Denmark (13.8%) have the lowest. In Germany, 24.0% of children under the age of 18 are considered to be at risk of poverty or social exclusion (Eurostat 2023).
Against this background, the Child Guarantee was adopted on 14 June 2021 as “Council Recommendation (EU) 2021/1004 establishing a European Child Guarantee” following various preliminary studies, feasibility studies and pilot programmes. Although it does not have any legal effect, it has a certain political binding force as a voluntary commitment by the EU Member States and represents a corresponding declaration of intent. The EU Child Guarantee is a central component of the Commission’s action plan on the European Pillar of Social Rights from 2017 and complements the EU’s comprehensive children’s rights strategy, which was published in 2021. In addition, the EU Commission published the recommendation “Investing in children: breaking the cycle of disadvantage” back in 2013.

2 Contents of the EU Child Guarantee

The Child Guarantee aims to “prevent and combat social exclusion by guaranteeing access for children in need to a range of essential services, thereby also contributing to the protection of children’s rights by tackling child poverty and promoting equality of opportunity”. The Child Guarantee defines its target group as “children in need”. This includes children living in or at risk of poverty in precarious family situations. However, the Child Guarantee also classifies children experiencing other forms of disadvantage as “children in need”. Other disadvantages that can make social inclusion and participation difficult include homelessness, disability, a migrant background, ethnic discrimination and institutionalization.
The European Child Guarantee contains commitments by the EU Member States by 2030 to guarantee children in need access to services and goods that are central for their wellbeing and growth to adulthood. These are in particular:

• effective and free access to high-quality early childhood education and care and educational and school-based activities, as well as at least one healthy meal each school day;
• effective and free access to healthcare;
• effective access to healthy nutrition and
• effective access to adequate housing.

The Child Guarantee specifies further how exactly access to these “services” is to be improved or what is regarded as the minimum level of provision. The respective explanations vary in scope and the measures vary in concrete terms. For example, concrete measures such as the call for Member States to “provide at least one healthy meal per school day” can be found alongside more abstract and complex recommendations to “develop a framework for cooperation among educational establishments, local communities, social, health and child protection services, families and social economy actors to support inclusive education, to provide after-school care and opportunities to participate in sport, leisure and cultural activities, and to build and invest in educational establishments as centres of inclusion and participation”.

In the preparatory phase prior to the adoption of the Child Guarantee, rights relating to cultural and sporting participation were also discussed as components of the Child Guarantee. However, these were not included in the final Council recommendation.

As one of the aims is to “ensure consistency of social, education, health, nutrition and housing policies at national, regional and local level”, the States are to appoint a national coordinator with appropriate resources and a corresponding mandate for implementation. In Germany, Ekin Deligöz, Parliamentary State Secretary at the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ), was appointed National Coordinator for the implementation of the Child Guarantee.

Another key requirement is the creation of National Action Plans (NAPs), which should contain quantitative and qualitative targets as well as measures and deadlines for achieving the targets and information on the necessary funding. In the development and implementation phases, children and young people, educational institutions and civil society organizations shall be involved.

The Child Guarantee provides for reporting to the Commission. Every two years, the national states are to report on the progress made in implementing the Child Guarantee and the National Action Plan.

To implement the Child Guarantee, the European Union provides financial assistance to the Member States via various funds such as the European Social Fund (ESF and ESF+), the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) to finance programmes and projects to support children and their families.

3 Implementation of the Child Guarantee

Prior to the adoption of the Child Guarantee, the German government had campaigned for the adoption of the Child Guarantee during the German EU Council Presidency in 2020. At the time, it initiated a declaration supported by almost all EU Member States calling on the EU Commission to quickly present a proposal and emphasizing the importance of a comprehensive social policy agenda in the Europe 2030 strategy. This declaration was welcomed by COFACE Families Europe in an open letter.

3.1 The German National Action Plan

However, the German government was one of the last six countries to submit its National Action Plan (NAP), more than one and a half years after the deadline.

In terms of content, the NAP first describes its history. In the next section, it describes the initial situation in Germany and also discusses the topics mentioned in the Child Guarantee. It states what data are available and describes the situation with regard to specific forms of disadvantage as mentioned in the Child Guarantee, as well as the barriers that children at risk of poverty encounter in accessing infrastructural services such as education.

In a third chapter, the various political levels are presented as well as some basic “political strategies to prevent poverty and social disadvantage”. Benefits such as child benefit, parental allowance, digitalization of benefits and the planned basic child protection are listed here.

The national challenges with regard to the five fields of action of the Child Guarantee occupy 30 pages. The needs presented here do provide a picture of the challenges, although it is noticeable that the Federal Government merely refers to the descriptions of the situation by national experts. It remains unclear whether the analyses are also shared by the federal government in this form or whether it is simply a matter of presenting “third-party” content.

In the remaining three chapters on monitoring and evaluation, the Federal Government takes just one page, in which it confirms that it will comply with the requirements for a progress report. It explains the planned structure of implementation with the NAP Committee, including the participation of children and young people, and briefly outlines the outlook. The vast majority of the text can be found in the appendix, which consists of 154 pages of individual measures, unfiltered and without comment, by the Federal Government, federal states and local authorities as well as individual stakeholders.

Criticism from national associations

At the heart of the criticism of the “New Opportunities for Children” action plan is the fact that new solutions can only be guessed at. On the contrary: the NAP makes it clear that no additional financial resources will be provided. The comments express regret that there is no in-depth discussion of the recommendations for action. The very comprehensive list of current and planned measures is seen by some as interesting. However, the assessments of the NAP showed that it would have been useful to do a critical analysis of the inadequate poverty policies to date and to develop instead a cross-legislative perspective as well as to identify systematic solutions with a holistic view and concrete steps.

Assessment by the EU Commission

In principle, the EU Commission sees itself as having only a very limited role in evaluating or even rejecting the NAPs submitted. However, it does issue bilateral “observations” to the States on the extent to which the NAP meets the expected standards, but these are generally not published.

The EU Commission has also written letter on these lines on the German NAP. In it, the Commission acknowledges that the Commission’s proposals on the structure of the NAP have essentially been taken into account and that there is a very detailed description of the development process for the NAP. The Commission also acknowledges the list of measures in the annexes but notes that there are few truly new measures.
With regard to the measures in the various topical areas, the EU Commission is relatively direct in its criticism and frequently offers assessments such as “far from sufficient”, “possibly insufficient”, “insufficient”, “no specific measures” and “very general”.

The Commission is much more positive about the German government’s plans to involve stakeholders. It also makes positive mention of the fact that Germany spends a relatively high amount on early childhood education in particular.

3.2 The implementation process of the NAP in Germany

In Germany, the implementation of the Child Guarantee is the responsibility of the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs. Senior Citizens, Women and Youth (BMFSFJ); the national coordinator is the Parliamentary State Secretary, Ekin Deligöz, as “National Child Opportunities Coordinator”. This means that formal coordination is relatively high by European standards. In addition to a minister and two deputy ministers, directors/ heads of department or units, etc., are otherwise strongly represented. Only in Austria was a person from a civil society organization elected.

The Federal Government always emphasizes that the NAP with the 2030 target is a dynamic instrument and is therefore subject to constant development and adjustment. A so-called “NAP Committee” was formed to do justice to this. Its purpose is to provide a networking and communication platform for relevant stakeholders from the Federal Government, federal states, municipalities and civil society as well as academia and to help embed the objectives of the NAP at all federal levels and in all areas of responsibility. The committee currently meets twice a year. Approximately half of its 50 members are representatives of federal ministries, the federal states and local authorities and the other half from civil society organizations and research. The BMFSFJ, the network of State Ministries for Family and Youth and the municipal umbrella organizations are represented on a steering committee, as are the civil society umbrella organizations from social welfare, the Child and Youth Welfare and the Family Organisations (AGF). The German Youth Institute provides technical and organizational support to the committee with a service and monitoring office (ServiKiD) funded by the BMFSFJ for this purpose.

Two meetings of the committee have taken place so far, in September 2023 and March 2024. At the suggestion of the Family Ministry, the NAP Committee is initially working primarily on the topic of “local poverty prevention” in addition to monitoring.

In addition to the NAP process in the committee, the Family Ministry is holding themed events, such as on municipal poverty prevention in November 2023 and probably in fall 2024.

The progress report

The Child Guarantee stipulates that States must prepare a progress report every two years. The German government has announced to the EU Commission that it intends to submit its progress report late, at the end of 2024. This document will consist of several parts: an inventory describing current developments in child poverty and social inclusion and a report on process. The DJI (German Youth Institute) will develop this part under its own authorship. A working group in the NAP committee will support the DJI in the concrete development of the indicator set. The main topic will be “local poverty prevention”. Two external expert reports have been prepared for this purpose, which will become part of the progress report and form a basis for discussion in the NAP Committee. Here too, a working group consisting of members of the NAP Committee and external experts was formed.

There will also be a statement from the Federal Government, to which the Federal Government’s detailed list of measures will again be attached. Civil society organizations will also be given the opportunity to draw up a joint statement, which will form a further part of the report, as will the results of child and youth participation and, possibly, further statements from the municipalities and federal states.
Participation of children and young people

The Council Recommendation on the EU Child Guarantee also provides for the direct participation of children and young people at risk of or affected by poverty and social exclusion. This is also planned as part of the national implementation process. A concept has been developed for this under the leadership of the DJI in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Waldemar Stange and the “Institut für Jugendhilfe und Kommunalberatung”, which will be implemented over time. A corresponding expert meeting is planned for the beginning of July 2024. In addition, the aim is to develop a professional exchange with the actors of the BMFSFJ’s National Action Plan for Child and Youth Participation in order to exploit corresponding synergies and avoid duplicate structures. In addition to direct participation, there will be further studies as part of qualitative research.

3.3 The European level and other countries

The EU Commission is attempting to support the implementation process, for example through regular cooperation meetings between the countries. Fourteen of these meetings have now taken place, the last one at the beginning of May 2024 as part of an EU Council Presidency event. The last meeting in this Commission period is scheduled for the end of June 2024. The EU Parliament is also supporting the process with a working group, which held its last meeting in this legislative period at the end of April 2024.

All states have published a NAP, albeit with considerable delay in some cases. These show a high level of agreement with the objectives of the Child Guarantee. However, a comparative evaluation by the AGF shows that in the majority of cases it is difficult to determine exactly what new measures have been initiated. Many action plans merely recapitulate existing policy measures and services. Although this subsequent relabeling of already planned or existing measures is considered legitimate by the EU Commission, it basically contradicts the idea of the Child Guarantee. And some action plans even manage without any planned measures at all. For example, France (which was relatively heavily criticized for its NAP) only reports on measures that “should” or “could” be implemented in addition to the current measures. Although Sweden mentions some newly planned measures, the majority of the very detailed action plan is taken up by existing measures. The Belgian action plan “currently only reports on recently introduced or announced policies.”

Ireland’s action plan, for example, shows that things can be done differently, demonstrating explicit political will and a consistent language of commitment as well as a highly systematic approach and ambitious goals. In the Czech action plan, the existing measures are presented primarily in terms of their gaps and deficits in order to derive targets and planned measures. Croatia, Poland and Spain have refrained from presenting their existing measures at all, concentrating instead on the planned measures – in the case of Spain with a very extensive, detailed plan with 88 measures, guided by 25 targets. Similarly, Bulgaria presents an action plan with 15 quantified targets for 2030 and a list of associated measures with responsibilities and sources of funding.
Unfortunately, it is apparent that only a few action plans formulate verifiable, quantifiable target indicators with fixed time targets. The very different levels of ambition of the Member States’ targets do not appear to be clearly linked to the level of poverty risks for children. The quantified targets for 2030 range from a reduction in poverty risks for children of 2.4% to 68% (on average around 25%). Ireland has set itself the target of moving from 20th place in the EU to 5th place by 2030, which means that the achievement of the target also depends on developments in the other Member States.

The progress reports on the respective national processes should be submitted to the Commission for the first time in mid-March 2024. There is some hope that they will clarify the objectives and measures. However, only 10 national reports were published at the beginning of May. Unfortunately, only three of these 10 reports were published in English. The reports have yet to be reviewed by the EU Commission and stakeholders.

4 Evaluation of the German NAP process to date

If you take a political commitment such as the Child Guarantee seriously and do not see it as a measure to keep stakeholders busy, you have to check what effects are achieved. What criteria can be used to evaluate the process of implementing the Child Guarantee?

It seems clear that, in the end, those politically responsible will have to be judged by whether the proportion of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion has decreased. It would have been good if the federal government had set specific targets. This would be objectively measurable and even if politicians do not have access to all economic factors that influence the poverty situation of children, they still have powerful instruments at their disposal. On the other hand, it will be necessary to ask whether opportunities for participation have improved. This is much more difficult to assess, as very different aspects of children’s and young people’s lives have to be considered and data is not available on all dimensions of the life situation that are relevant to participation.
For an evaluation during the overall process, one can look at the following factors, among others: Are additional, new measures being implemented and / or structures being improved in such a way that positive effects for children can be assumed? Is the issue of child poverty and its consequences receiving more public attention? Are children and young people as well as social stakeholders efficiently involved in the implementation process? Are those politically responsible succeeding in developing a coherent perspective for action for the federal levels that extends beyond the respective legislative periods?

The European Child Guarantee and therefore also the NAP and its implementation are aimed at the year 2030 and intensive cooperation between the various structures. In this respect, an attempt is being made to avoid the usual procedures, which function in pillars (and thus also in competition) and in legislative periods. There are already other examples that use similar approaches in an attempt to achieve long-term effects, such as the national sustainability strategy. Past examples also show (unfortunately) how difficult these processes are.
After only two meetings of the NAP Committee, it is difficult to assess the process that has now been set up. So far, the only real substantive discussions have taken place in the working groups. The approach of involving stakeholders from all perspectives and levels and arriving at joint findings is initially the right one. It is also to be expected that the support provided by the German Youth Institute will add important scientific expertise.

However, the sticking point for successful implementation that actually shows tangible improvements in the poverty and participation indicators for children and young people by 2030 at the latest lies in the fundamental political prioritization of the goal. The responsibility of a single ministry for such a holistic process makes success difficult, even if individual actors are highly motivated, if there is a lack of a common vision for the entire federal government. In this respect, the lack of adequate funding for the NAP process is a major obstacle to the achievement of objectives, but would be manageable if it were clear that there would be an overall shift in priorities with corresponding investments to better fight child and family poverty and social exclusion. But this is precisely what the federal government quite explicitly denied in the NAP. All the more reason for the stakeholders involved in the NAP – and this includes the respective federal ministries and federal states, which make up 50% of the total – to make their contribution to its implementation. This urgently requires the federal government and the federal states to set appropriate priorities and, as a result, the corresponding honest openness, willingness to talk and implement, to really understand the reduction of child poverty and its consequences as a common goal and to commit to it accordingly. If this is the case, there is at least a chance that – given the way the process is embedded in the government, ministry and federal structure – the NAP process will provide an important impetus and the wagging of the tail will get the dog moving at least a little bit.

Further information:

Website of the European Commission on the Child Guarantee

Download European Child Gurantee

• COUNCIL RECOMMENDATION (EU) 2021/1004 of14 June 2021 establishing a European Child Guarantee

AGF-Recommendations

• European Child Guarantee – AGF-Recommendations for a National Action Plan in Germany

Reports on AGF expert discussions

• Report of the expert discussion “The EU Child Guarantee and the promotion of children’s access to health goods and services in Germany”
• Report on the expert discussion “The EU Child Guarantee and the promotion of children’s access to health goods and services in Germany”

Some important documents:

• European Parliament resolution of 29 April 2021 on the European Child Guarantee (29 April 2021)
• Proposal for a Council Recommendation establishing a European Child Guarantee(24. March 2021)
• EU Child Rights Strategy (24. March 2021)
• Reaction of COFACE Families Europe on the Europeans Commisson’s proposal for a Council Recommendation (25. March 2021)
• FactSheet Child Guarantee (Stand 25. March 2021)
• Study on the economic implementing framework of a possible EU Child Guarantee Scheme including its financial foundation (March 2021)
• UNICEF Child Guarantee Pilots: The Child Guarantee: Phase III – “Testing the Child Guarantee in the EU Member States”
• Background Information on the Child Guarantee by the Observatory for Sociopolitical Developments in Europe (in German)
• Declaration on establishing a Child Guarantee by 25 Member States (December 2020)
• Open letter of COFACE Families Europe on establishing a Child Guarantee (December 2020)
• Fesability Study on a Child Guarantee (July 2020)

Further articles on the European Child Guarantee