children-with-teacher1On the occasion of the EPSCO Council held in Brussels this week, the Alliance for Investing in Children, of which Eurodiaconia is a member issued a press release emphasising that tackling and preventing child poverty and social exclusion are key to achieving the Europe 2020 headline targets.

More specifically we called on social affairs ministers to:

•    Give priority and urgency to the implementation of the EC Recommendation Investing in Children when adopting conclusions on the European Semester 2014 and on the AGS 2014
•    Include the indicator of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the scoreboard of social and employment indicators; and urge the scoreboard to become binding in order to deepen the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union.

Click here to read the full press release

There are 26,5 million children across the European Union at risk of poverty or social exclusion – half a million more than a year ago – and the economic, financial and social crisis is only putting even more children at risk.