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Taken from “Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice” Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

Launched in 2021, the European Child Guarantee (ECG) aims to ensure that children in need can access key services, including education, healthcare, nutrition, housing, and early childhood care, while targeting children living in poverty, those with disabilities, those from migrant or minority backgrounds, those experiencing homelessness, and those in alternative care. Four years on, progress remains uneven. While some countries have improved coordination and access to services, persistent challenges remain around data availability, child participation and sustainable investment. Despite long-standing commitments, around 19 million children in the EU continue to experience poverty, discrimination and unequal access to these key services, particularly those facing multiple disadvantages.

This sub-report reviews the implementation of the ECG, drawing on input from Eurochild members who shared challenges and promising good practices from their national contexts. It identifies common themes, recommendations and remaining gaps, and highlights good practices from across the EU and other European countries. It also outlines the role the European Semester process can play in strengthening the ECG. The report aims to support policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders in improving implementation, building on what works, and ensuring the ECG delivers lasting, meaningful changes for children in vulnerable situations across Europe.

Overall Converging Recommendations

Across countries, five core priorities emerge:

1. Move from coordination on paper to systemic, cross-sector implementation.
2. Ensure sustainable, structural funding rather than short-term project logic.
3. Strengthen monitoring, data collection and accountability mechanisms.
4. Guarantee meaningful participation of civil society, children, and families.
5. Target the most vulnerable children through integrated, preventive approaches.

Read the full sub-report

Taken from “Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice” Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

Across Europe, access to safe, secure, and adequate housing has become one of the most pressing structural challenges affecting children and their families. While poverty is often measured in income terms, its consequences are often most visible in the places where children grow up. Housing conditions shape children’s physical and mental health, educational opportunities, stability, and overall development. When housing is insecure, overcrowded, or substandard, children’s rights are directly undermined. According to the latest national statistics, roughly 400,000 children are homeless in the EU.

Eurochild’s Recommendations

To ensure that every child grows up in safe, secure and adequate housing, governments at national and EU level should take the following actions:

1. Prioritise safe, secure and adequate housing for every child

• Provide every child with safe, secure and adequate housing that supports their physical, mental, and social development.
• Apply a child rights-based approach to the early identification of housing-related risks, including homelessness.
• Implement adequate legal protections to prevent forced evictions.
• Ensure families facing eviction can access safe alternative housing options.

2. Increase social housing and develop comprehensive national strategies

• Substantially increase the social housing stock.
• Lower access barriers to social and affordable housing.
• Develop comprehensive national housing strategies rooted in children’s rights.
• Include long-term planning, accelerate the construction of affordable homes, address regional disparities, and improve the quality of existing housing.
• Reinforce inclusive and child-sensitive housing policies and maintain affordability. Replace a segregated housing approach with an inclusive and integrated approach.

3. Tackle the financial burden of high housing costs

• Address the financial burden of high housing costs including energy costs, especially for low-income families.
• Adopt policies to regulate housing prices and prevent families from being overwhelmed by disproportionately high costs, particularly during economic and cost-of-living crises.
• Introduce measures such as rent control policies, subsidies for low-income households, and targeted support for families at risk of poverty.

By implementing these measures, governments can move towards housing systems that protect children from poverty and exclusion, strengthen families, and ensure that children’s rights are upheld in practice.

Read the full subreport

Taken from “Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice” Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

Children’s mental health services in Europe are under intense pressure.  Without urgent action to expand, coordinate, and invest in services, millions of children face preventable psychological harm. Governments must prioritise child-centred, equitable, and evidence-based mental health systems to safeguard the well-being and rights of all children. This sub-report includes information from 34 countries, provides examples of promising and effective practices, and offers general recommendations to support children’s mental health and well-being.

Recommendations for Policymakers

1. Expand Access and Coverage:
   • Increase the number of child mental health professionals and multidisciplinary teams.
   • Extend services to rural and underserved areas; implement mobile mental health units.
   • Ensure trauma-informed, refugee-sensitive, and child-centred approaches.
     
     
2. Invest in Prevention and Early Intervention:
   • Strengthen school-based counselling and low-threshold services.
   • Detect mental, behavioural, and developmental challenges early.
     
     
3. Improve Data Collection and Monitoring:
   • Create child-focused national monitoring systems.
   • Include disaggregated data and children’s voices in surveys and research.
     
     
4. Enhance Coordination and Holistic Support:
   • Integrate health, education, social services, and civil society efforts.
   • Adopt rights-based approaches with child and family participation in service design.
     
     
5. Address Inequalities and Emerging Risks:
   • Focus support on vulnerable children: migrant, refugee, minority, children in care, or conflict-affected.
   • Reduce school pressure, address bullying, and raise awareness about online harms.
     
     
6. Ensure Sustainable Investment:
   • Provide long-term funding for child mental health services.
   • Train, retain, and incentivize professionals, particularly in underserved regions.
     

Read the full subreport

A call to rethink the business model of social media to address risks for children.

The debate on age restrictions on social media should be used to push for substantive reform of how social media operates, and discuss how companies can prioritise children’s rights over profit and uphold them as a condition for operating in European countries. The choice is not simply between a “ban” and “no ban”. That framing obscures the real issue.

The real choice is whether we accept a digital environment designed around profit and attention capture, or insist on platforms that are accountable, transparent, and safe-by-design for children. This paper argues that age restrictions alone won’t keep children safe, so the EU should prioritise children’s rights-based, safe-by-default regulation that tackles platforms’ risk-driving business models and design choices, making platforms safer for children and therefore safer for everyone.

Age restrictions alone won’t keep children safe unless platforms are held accountable for risk-driving business models and design choices (attention extraction, profiling, addictive features) through child-centred and safe-by-design legislation and enforcement. We do not call for a blanket ban, but for a rights-based framework where any age-gating is necessary, proportionate and privacy-preserving, paired with stronger independent risk assessments, researcher access to data, and states investing in offline support rather than outsourcing children’s rights to platforms.

Key messages and recommendations:

1. Age restrictions can never replace regulation or company responsibility
   Even if age limits exist, they will not address harms on their own. Existing rules (like the DSA, GDPR and AI Act) must be enforced strongly, and new rules (including on online child sexual abuse) are vital because harms happen beyond “social media”, and they are solely driven by whether a child can access given platforms.
   
   
2. Children’s rights apply to everyone under 18, with safeguards that evolve by age
   Your rights don’t switch off because of age gates. Safeguards should increase with younger age, but older teens should be empowered (evolving capacities).
   
   
3. Platform power requires structural accountability
   Children might experience social media differently, but it is neither fair nor realistic to expect every child and caregiver to “self-manage” services intentionally designed to be hard to disengage from. Protective design must be required by law and set as the default.
   
   
4. Data extraction for behavioural advertising and engagement optimisation must end
   The current business model treats children’s identities, emotions, and behaviours as monetisable assets. While companies must not use data of minors for commercial practices, it is also crucial to raise awareness around the issues of sharenting and childfluencers, protecting children’s privacy, dignity and protection from exploitation.
   
   
5. The business model must change: reduce harm at the source
   Eurochild calls for action against features that fuel compulsive use and risky exposure (e.g., infinite scroll, autoplay, manipulative nudges), or illegal content. Social media must be completely revolutionised and monitored independently.
   
   
6. Social media must be safe by default
   Some people will always get around age checks. That’s exactly why platforms must not keep a “wild west” experience for anyone who isn’t logged in. High privacy and safety should be the default for everyone.
   
   
7. Regulation must be strengthened to make risk assessments independent and much more robust
   Independent, detailed and compulsory standards is needed, to robustly review risks and set proportionate minimum-age and age-assurance requirements using privacy-preserving technology.
   
   
8. Independent access to platform data is essential, and more research is needed
   After years of controversies and scandals, trust cannot be rebuilt without independent scientific scrutiny and interdisciplinary research combining survey data with objective platform data and (where appropriate) neuroscientific evidence. Researchers must be given meaningful access to platform data.
   
   
9. Age assurance and verification should protect privacy and avoid discrimination
   If age checks are used, they must be reliable, non-intrusive and non-discriminatory. Eurochild points to the EU Digital Identity Wallet as a potentially more privacy-preserving option—but only if tested properly and safe for marginalised children.
   
   
10. Governments can’t outsource their responsibilities to platforms
    If social media is filling gaps (safe spaces, youth services, mental health support), that’s a warning sign. States must invest in real offline and online support, platforms can’t replace public responsibility.
    

Read our position paper

Taken from “Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice” Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

This sub-report synthesises evidence on children’s rights in the digital environment, with input from members from all countries.

Challenges faced by children in the digital environment:

• Child sexual abuse and exploitation: Child sexual abuse material, AI-generated CSAM, Grooming;
• Online safety and platform accountability: Excessive time spent in the digital environment, Exposure to harmful content, Cyberbullying;
• Data protection and age verification: Sharenting and childfluencers/kidsfluencer;
• Emerging tech and commercial practices: Artificial Intelligence, Online gambling, Gaming and advertising;
• The digital divide.

Recommendations

• Protect children from child sexual abuse and exploitation
• Make platform accountability work for children in practice
• Tackle addictive and manipulative design and harmful commercial practices
• Guarantee children’s privacy and data protection
• Protect children from harms linked to AI and other emerging technologies
•  Close the digital divide as a children’s rights issue
•  Strengthen evidence, enforcement and participation

Read the full subreport

Taken from “Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice” Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

This sub-report outlines the progress and ongoing challenges affecting very young children and their families and caregivers. It outlines the issues that affect early childhood development, including access to quality early childhood education and care, and makes recommendations to European governments and institutions for ensuring the fulfilment of children’s rights from their earliest years.

Findings from Eurochild members:

• Positive interventions that support early childhood development
• Investing in early intervention, cross-sector support and integrated services for children’s early years
• Obstacles to children’s participation in quality early childhood education and care (ECEC)
• More data needed to inform policy and practice

Recommendations:

• Increase public investment in early childhood development, ensuring universal access to essential services for all children aged 0–6.
• Adopt a comprehensive and cross-sector approach to early childhood development, with a range of integrated and coordinated services that can support all young children and their families, especially those who are most marginalised.
• Focus investment on early and local interventions, with community-based services and hubs where families and caregivers can access early childhood services and support.
• Increase public investment to expand free, inclusive, high-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) for all children, including those aged 0-3.
• Invest in ECEC staff who can provide tailored support for children with disabilities or who face particular disadvantages, and ensure inclusive learning.
• Ensure that ECEC provision is of high quality, with national standards and a qualified, professional and valued ECEC workforce.
• Fully implement the European Child Guarantee, the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child and the revised Barcelona targets on Early Childhood Education and Care.
• Support a European Year of Early Childhood.

Read the full subreport

Eurochild’s next strategy centres on placing children’s rights at the heart of all actions, ensuring they are prioritised, protected and upheld by institutions, with meaningful participation of children throughout.

Building on the collective strength of child rights leaders, activists, practitioners and experts, Eurochild will connect and empower its members and allies to influence policy, strengthen advocacy and challenge exclusionary narratives across Europe. To maximise impact, the organisation will further strengthen its network by enhancing governance, financial resilience, advocacy and communications, while consistently involving and consulting children in shaping its work.

Our Goals:

• Upholding and protecting children’s rights
• Championing rights, voices and interests of all children
• Building a united movement for children’s rights
• Bolstering a resilient and impactful network

Read the full strategy and discover our priorities

Eurochild calls for a comprehensive approach to child poverty and social exclusion to ensure the new EU budget tackles social disparities from childhood.

The European Commission’s 2026 European Semester Autumn Package, published in November 2025, launched the annual EU cycle for coordinating economic, employment, and social policies. A key focus is on boosting competitiveness, with the Union of Skills playing a central role due to its links to education, lifelong learning, skills development, and social inclusion. The 2026 cycle is especially significant as it will help shape the next Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). The Commission proposes that much of the future funding be distributed through national and regional partnership plans (NRPPs) and the European Competitiveness Fund (ECF), which must address challenges identified through the European Semester, including country-specific recommendations.

Eurochild’s analysis of the package concentrates on the Proposal for a Joint Employment Report, which reviews employment and social trends, tracks progress toward the EU’s 2030 targets, and assesses implementation of the Employment Guidelines and the European Pillar of Social Rights. Eurochild welcomes the broader focus on social outcomes like poverty, inequality, and access to services, but notes that children are still mainly considered in relation to labour market participation and future skills, rather than from a comprehensive child rights perspective.

Read the report and analysis here

Taken from Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

On 20 November – World Children’s Day – Eurochild released its flagship report on children in need, titled Unequal Childhoods: Rights on paper should be rights in practice, which compiles information from 84 members across 36 countries in Europe. This sub-report synthesises evidence on child protection issues and the prevention of family separation.

Across Europe, legal commitments to protect family life often coexist with policy choices that undermine prevention. Some governments have adopted explicit strategies to keep children with their families and build the services needed to make this possible. Others continue enacting restrictive or punitive measures that increase the likelihood of separation.

Read the full sub-report here

Eurochild 2025 flagship report on children in need across Europe.

This report is based on assessments by 84 Eurochild members and contributors in 36 countries and provides an overview of children’s rights and child poverty in these countries. Drawing on evidence from organisations and professionals working with children, the report provides an in-depth analysis, through a children’s rights lens, to ensure that rights on paper become rights in practice.

“Despite progress made in some countries, child poverty and social exclusion remain too high across Europe. Lack of access to basic services and ongoing discrimination continue to affect the most vulnerable children. As more countries face attacks that undermine democracy and limit actions of those defending children’s rights, European leaders must join forces with civil society to protect and promote the rights of every child in Europe and beyond. ” – Tanya Ward, President of Eurochild.

The report provides concrete recommendations for countries to strengthen their efforts to protect and promote children’s rights. Among the aspects analysed across Europe: children in contact with the justice system, public investment and social safety nets, violence against children, mental health, children with a migrant background and ethnic minority origin.

Our Policy Recommendations:

• Uphold the rights of all children and counter anti-rights movements
• Ensure integrated child protection systems and strengthen families
• Uphold children’s rights in the digital environment
• Eradicate child poverty and social exclusion
• Strengthen the European Child Guarantee
• Ensure adequate housing for all children
• Anchor child-related priorities in the European Semester to invest in children post-2027
• Support children’s rights in the Enlargement Countries

Country Profiles: Albania; Austria; Belgium; Bosnia and Herzegovina; Bulgaria; Croatia; Cyprus; Czechia; Denmark; England; Estonia; Finland; France; Germany; Greece; Hungary; Ireland; Italy; Kosovo; Latvia; Luxembourg; Malta; Moldova; Netherlands; Poland; Portugal; Romania; Scotland; Serbia; Slovenia; Spain; Sweden; Switzerland; Türkiye; Ukraine; Wales.

Find out more:

PHOTOS: Flagship dissemination meetings with EU policy makers

Our sub-reports on:

• Child protection systems in Europe
• Early Childhood Development in Europe: focus on integrated and quality services for all
• Children’s rights in the digital environment
• Children’s Mental Health in Europe: Urgent Gaps and Policy Recommendations
• Every Child’s Right to Safe, Secure, and Adequate Housing
• Delivering on the European Child Guarantee: Implementation, practice and priorities