Reminder

This is the third progress update on the work being done through the European Alliance for Families. The two previous ones were dated 15 June 2007 and 3 December 2007.

Expert Group’s activities

The list of Expert Group members is now available on the European Commission’s website.
http://ec.europa.eu/employment_social/spsi/forum_on_demo_future_en.htm

On 9 June 2008, the European Commission gave the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council a information note on the first year’s work of the High Level Expert Group on Demographic Issues.
http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/08/st10/st10321.en08.pdf

In the past year, the Group has been involved in the development of the European Alliance for Families:

- the Group was involved in the preparation of a brochure to promote the use by local stakeholders of EU Structural Funds in projects aimed at supporting families

- the appointment of national correspondents for the  European Alliance for Families’ web portal also took place through the Group

- the Group was involved in the preparation of the 2008 demography report and forum

- the Group provided a forum for information exchange on key national developments and the outcomes of work done by the Council of Europe, OECD and European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound)

The Group also gave input into the preparation of the Commission Communication on the needs of an ageing population which will be published in autumn 2008.

The Commission concluded its note by commending the Expert Group’s usefulness and emphasizing the very strong interest of civil society in the Group’s work.

The 27 government experts appointed by the Member States met in Brussels on 24 June, chiefly to prepare the 2008 Demographic Forum and draw up the work program for 2009.

Seminar on Policies for Today's Families: Towards a Framework for Assessing Family Policies in the EU

This seminar was organized by the European Commission on 25 June 2008 in Brussels  in order to contribute to the exchange platform on studies and good practices set up by the European Alliance for Families. Its purpose was to present the evaluation of policy instruments to support families and a draft framework for assessing family policies, prepared by the European Commission and OECD and for which the OECD family database will serve as an input.

COFACE had been invited to take part in the final round table, where it both welcomed and suggested a number of possible improvements to the Commission measure (assessment of policies for non-child dependents and specific policies for people with disabilities, sustainability focus of the initiatives implemented, reference to selected indicators on parental leave and kinds of financial help to families, etc.). The European Commission undertook to look at these proposals.

A more complete version of the assessment framework is likely to be presented to the second European Demographic Forum being held in Brussels on 24-25 November 2008.

The meeting was attended by a hundred participants, including 8 COFACE members from Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Italy and Slovakia.

Alliance web portal

The Alliance’s web portal is still working but has not been updated recently. You can sign up for an emailed newsletter for forthcoming updates.

Last July the European Commission published an invitation to tender for the updating and content development for the web portal for 2009. The portal will have to contain a catalogue of family-friendly practices in the EU, country fact sheets on the situation of families and on family policies in the Member States, and information on key studies and reports on families and family-relevant policies. For this, the contractor will be responsible for gathering examples of best practice in the area of family-friendly actions at national, regional, local and company levels. The Commission intends this as a means of compensating for the Observatory on good family policy practices not having been set up for want of budgetary resources. The tender specifications also require the contractor to propose methods of co-operation with the stakeholders.

Second European Demographic Forum

The second European Demographic Forum will be held in Brussels on 24 and 25 November 2008 and will focus on active ageing and family policies. As the current provisional agenda stands, the topics to be addressed are: tackling child poverty, family-friendly measures in the workplace, equal sharing of responsibilities by men and women, volunteering by senior citizens, adapting towns to the needs of older people, and community care for older people.

COFACE and its members have already been invited to take part in the Forum.