Debate: European Child Guarantee
Date: WEDNESDAY, 28 APRIL 2021
Speaker: Lucia Ďuriš Nicholsonová
Country: Germany
Language: EN

A few years ago, as a journalist, I covered a story about a young mother, Blažena, and her son Andrej from a very poor Roma community, Sása Lomno. This is a segregated settlement ten kilometres away from the nearest village on the top of a mountain with no road. When we entered the settlement, we asked for Blažena and her son Andrej, and the locals instructed us, ‘There, by the shed where the two kids froze last winter. You have to turn to the right’. Andrej was born with glaucoma. This is an eye disease that can be treated only on a regular basis. When I interviewed the doctor, she told me, ‘You know gypsies, they do not treat their children as we do ours. I told the mother to come on a regular basis, and she did not. The authorities should be taking their children away from them. They are not good parents.’ But was Blažena really to blame for her son going blind? She lived in a forest 20 kilometres away from the doctor and five kilometres away from the nearest bus stop. She did not have the money for travelling costs, nor the strength to carry her son all the way through the woods. Could she get a job? I suppose, in a very romantic world, she could – but who would hire a poorly educated Roma mother of a blind boy living in a forest? No public water, no central heating, no electricity, no gas, no hope, nothing. In Sása Lomno there is no educational facility for children with special needs, and the nearest special school is 20 kilometres away. No education, no health care, no future. Andrej is a perfect picture of a child that needs our attention. There is a serious concern that it will be too tempting for the Member States to focus rather on low—hanging fruit, to meet the superficial quantity indicators in the implementation of the European Child Guarantee. We have to focus more on quality than on quantity indicators. We have to ask the right questions. Who are these children that we help through the Child Guarantee? How was their life before and how did it improve? First, we need robust data at national level to identify the children in need, and these data cannot avoid children like Andrej. Only when we know our national target groups can we come up with meaningful projects. Secondly, we need a horizontal approach in national governments. We ought to get rid of resortism and we have to take on board municipalities and the NGOs. Every euro from the European Social Fund Plus (ESF+) or the NextGenerationEU fund that is reserved for the Child Guarantee has to be spent effectively to help children in need. Thirdly, the only sustainable way to pull children out of poverty is by helping their parents. They need job opportunities and a way out of the vicious circle. Now, on behalf of the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs (EMPL), I have several oral questions, firstly to the Commission, on the effective use of the EU funds for the implementation of the Child Guarantee, on the reduction of educational inequalities deepened by the pandemic, and on the inclusive approach to tackling child poverty. Secondly, to the Council: how to meet the 2030 targets to lift five million children out of poverty, including policies in the fields that are covered by the Guarantee, on the effective use of EU funds and the national resources for the Guarantee, and, finally, on the monitoring of national policies. I am very much looking forward to the debate.