Young Socialists say child care today means a better tomorrow

12 April 2007

At their Congress in Warsaw ECOSY – the Young European Socialists – agreed a resolution supporting the PES child care campaign and making the inspiring claim that “providing good quality public child care for free to all children across Europe is acting today to ensure better tomorrow”.   

The resolution reaffirms ECOSY’s support for free, good quality public child care for all, and promises to “join our efforts to support the PES Campaign ‘children first’ launched at the last PES Congress in Porto in December 2006.”

It calls on EU member states to devote themselves to free, high quality and public child care and emphasizes the need for good quality care. The resolution says “we appeal for a holistic approach to child care policies that encompasses pedagogy, health care, nurturing and education.”

ECOSY also agreed that “child care is an important component of a Social Europe”. 

In an article in ECOSY Newsletter Congress delegate Kaisa Vatanen of Finland writes “It is one of the greatest achievements of the Finnish social democrats in the field of gender equality that all the under school age children have universal right for day-care.” 

But Eliza Politi and Danai Tasopoulou of PASOK Youth (Greece) describe the traditional form of families “according to which women take care also of the household and children” and the subsequent “lack of child care and elderly care institutions and facilities” and write “It should no longer be a shame for young women to send their children to nurseries before schooling age, nor to accept and use all possibilities for the care of elderly members of the family.”

Read the full text of the ECOSY resolution 

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Julian Scola, Press Officer
Party of European Socialists, Rue du Trône, 98, B-1050 Brussels
Mobile +32 486 117 394,