Changes from plenary report to adopted text

39. Notes that Europe is experiencing skills shortages across the economy, reinforced by a declining labour force; notes, furthermore, that some shortages can be traced back to the underuse of existing talent, as evidenced by deep gender gaps in certain occupations, or to the specific challenges surrounding working conditions, such as low pay or lack of attractiveness;

40. Highlights the need to support the development of online services and training to increase the digital competences of carers and persons receiving care, by improving internet access and connections so as to enhance the quality of care and benefit from technology in supporting quality care;

41. Stresses that unpaid care work has a social and economic impact; stresses that unpaid care work plays a critical role in European societies and economies, affecting workforce participation, particularly among women, contributing to persistent gender gaps in employment and pay, and placing significant pressure on social welfare, health and long-term care systems across Member States; calls, therefore, on the Member States to pay special attention to caregivers in early detection and prevention programmes; underlines the challenges, including socio-economic in nature, faced by informal carers, mostly women, who provide unpaid care work and face a combined work and care overload with limited social protection, insufficient formal care infrastructure and inadequate mental health support and whose contributions need recognition and targeted support; notes that informal carers can experience loneliness, poverty, difficulties in accessing employment or physical and mental health issues; emphasises, in particular, that the mental health issues associated with long-term care provision include anxiety and depression, which are 20 % more prevalent among informal carers than among non-carers, and that 66 % of formal care workers face mental health risks; notes that this is a significant disparity compared to the broader workforce, where 43 % report similar issues; observes that informal care responsibilities may limit the ability of the caregiver to attend their own preventive health appointments and can lead to a loss of income, contributing to women’s poverty; stresses that these detrimental effects are closely associated with the intensity of the care provided;

42. Denounces the fact that many care and domestic workers are facing a highly precarious situation and experiencing intersectional discrimination as a result of their race or ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status or nationality, and the fact that many of these workers are women who do not have an official employment contract, and are thus more vulnerable to exploitation and often lack access to their rights, in particular to decent work and social protection;

43. Calls for targeted financial support and initiatives that provide psychological and mental health assistance services to informal carers, including respite care to provide occasional relief, and for measures to prevent poverty and social exclusion, with the exchange of best practices in this regard across the Member States;

44. Stresses that adequate and targeted support for informal carers should comprise recognition of carers’ roles and rights, support services such as respite care, counselling, peer support, financial help and compensation to reduce poverty risk, flexible work arrangements (leave, working hours, teleworking) to balance care and employment, training and information to equip carers with skills and meaningful participation in policy development;

45. Highlights that significant efforts are needed to strengthen the professional status of care workers and to address the workforce shortages in the care sector, including through tailored solutions to encourage declared work, fair wages, career development pathways, and better and decent working conditions; underlines that investing in formal care services can significantly relieve the pressure on informal carers, and prevent some of the detrimental effects on their work-life balance and career prospects, thereby contributing to gender equality;

46. Emphasises the importance of ensuring access to adequate targeted psychosocial and educational support for young carers, providing care informally, who make up 4 % to 10 % of children in the EU and whose caregiving responsibilities affect their education, mental health, social development and future careers; urges the creation of dedicated EU programmes to support young carers, so as to avoid school or labour market dropouts;

47. Acknowledges that while a significant portion of care work is carried out by EU nationals, a share is also carried out by women originating from non-EU countries; stresses that, while efforts should concentrate on attracting and retaining domestic care workers, the recruitment of non-EU workers must be based on labour market needs, through well-managed legal migration and should include comprehensive professional training; emphasises that the recruitment of non-EU workers must take place exclusively through transparent and rights-based legal migration channels; calls for substantial investment in skills development and professional training to support the empowerment and integration of legal non-EU workers; strongly condemns all forms of undeclared work, exploitation and precarious employment and highlights the indispensable contribution of both EU and non-EU care workers to social cohesion and well-being in the EU;

48. Recognises that access to quality healthcare, including sexual and reproductive health rights, is vital to afford everyone a good quality of life;

The way forward

49. Calls on the Commission, together with the relevant agencies, to provide accurate, accessible and comparable data measuring the gender care gap, including through time-use surveys, in order to enable the Member States to share best practice and effectively address this gap;

50. Calls for the systematic collection of gender-disaggregated, accurate, high-quality, comparative data on care responsibilities in long-term and child care, on earnings, including salaries and wages, pensions, working time, social protection coverage, contractual status of care workers in the EU, and the situation of non-EU nationals and children who provide care and, where possible, data on PHS and informal care in order to monitor the amount of care provided by family members to their relatives and whether or how these care responsibilities affect their working lives;

51. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to collect data on the situation of young carers, and to develop EU-wide guidelines and exchange best practices to help Member States identify and support them in schools and communities, and through reinforced healthcare systems; calls on the Commission to establish a structured dialogue on care and to establish an annual care platform, which would bring together all relevant stakeholders, such as academics, Member State representatives, associations of persons receiving care, informal carers, social, for-profit, public and not-for-profit providers of care and trade unions, to assess progress, exchange innovative practices to improve the achievement of the objectives of the EU care strategy, and design the next steps for its ongoing implementation;

52. Urges the application of gender budgeting to ensure that spending on care services directly reduces inequalities faced by women and girls;

53. Stresses that the role of caregivers should be, above all, to take care, and therefore considers it necessary to cut unnecessary red tape and avoid as much as possible assigning them administrative tasks that can be managed by administrative assistants or suitable digital tools;

54. Emphasises the need to consult all relevant stakeholders during the preparation of the announced care deal, at EU, national and local level, including informal carer representatives and patient organisations, so as to avoid policy silos, and to take into account the diversity of situations and needs;

59. Stresses that particular attention should be given to informal carers, families and parents, especially mothers, who provide long-term care to children with disabilities, by ensuring adequate support, whether financial or through social security and access to respite and counselling services;

60. Stresses, in this regard, that, as an obligation stemming from the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the EU must systematically mainstream the rights of persons with disabilities through all programmes in the post-2027 multiannual financial framework by developing a methodology to track spending that benefits persons with disabilities, including women and girls, and by verifying that all programmes and EU-funded projects guarantee equal opportunities and access to EU funding for persons with disabilities;

61. Calls for the full implementation and further careful monitoring, enforcement and evaluation of the Work-Life Balance Directive; stresses the need to extend and advance towards an adequately compensated maternity, paternity and carer’s leave and facilitate the take up of parental leave as well as monitoring men’s uptake of such leave; calls on the Member States to upgrade the status of informal caregivers through appropriate remuneration and compensation and access to respite care services to better support current informal caregivers, while also helping achieve the directive’s initial objective of encouraging more men to become involved in providing care; urges the Commission to push for incentives for both parents to benefit from parental leave, calling furthermore for flexible working arrangements for parents, and to propose EU-level quality guidelines and the sharing of best practices for long-term care services, including for adequate staffing levels, specialised training programmes and quality assurance mechanisms; calls for employees, in particular women, who use their leave to provide care to their family members, to be effectively protected from dismissal or any discriminatory treatment related to their care responsibilities;

62. Urges the Member States to introduce adequately paid, non-transferable parental leave for each parent, to prevent women from being disproportionately burdened with caregiving responsibilities; underlines that improving men’s uptake of leave is crucial for shifting norms, ensuring women’s equal participation in the labour market and mitigating any negative intergenerational effect on girls;

63. Calls on the Commission to present a directive on the right to disconnect to protect all workers, particularly parents and caregivers;

64. Calls for the protection of informal carers, who are predominantly women, including those taking a break from employment to provide care to a family member or someone else in need of care; urges the Commission and the Member States to promote, recognise and support their role, acknowledging their vital contribution to social cohesion and to the sustainability of care systems across Europe; requests, in this regard, that their access to social protection systems be ensured in order to mitigate the adverse effects of caregiving, especially on women’s careers and economic independence, while ensuring, at the same time, that women are not pushed out of the formal labour market;

65. Urges the Commission to introduce a comprehensive, gender-responsive framework to identify and recognise the different forms of informal care across Europe in the next European care strategy; stresses that informal carers must be provided with support, flexible working arrangements, care leave and access to adequate supplementary care services, as well as counselling and peer support; underlines the importance of securing access to personal time for informal carers and of encouraging their personal development;

66. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to recognise unpaid carers by ensuring access to social protection, pension credits, respite services and financial support; stresses the need to progressively reduce unpaid care work borne by women and girls with solutions that redistribute burdens, such as investment in affordable childcare, eldercare and disability services, and the promotion of men’s equal participation in care work;

67. Points out that providing universal high-quality childcare services would reduce unpaid care work;

68. Calls on the Member States to share good practices on minimum respite periods for informal carers, ensuring their physical and mental well-being and enabling their continued participation in employment; calls for concrete support actions, such as awareness-raising campaigns, voluntary pathways to skills recognition and targeted training;

69. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to recognise young carers whose needs are often overlooked and to develop targeted support measures, including flexible education arrangements, counselling services and respite care, to prevent negative impacts on their health, education and future employment opportunities;

70. Encourages the Commission and the Member States to ensure that periods of informal caregiving are fairly recognised in pension and social security systems and in related future EU initiatives; encourages the Member States, furthermore, to explore fair and sustainable solutions to protect those – predominantly women – who dedicate significant parts of their working lives to caring for dependents;

71. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to improve working conditions in the formal care sector, focusing on ensuring fair and equal remuneration, with attention given to the physical and psychological demands linked to caregiving, as well as access to continuous training and safe working environments, including measures to prevent burnout and all forms of violence and harassment at work, while promoting the attractiveness of care professions through long-term perspectives, strengthening social dialogue and encouraging more men to enter and remain in the care sector; highlights that improving salaries and working conditions in the care sector will make jobs more attractive and discourage undeclared work; recalls the need for the Member States to properly transpose and implement the Pay Transparency Directive so as to establish pay structures that reflect the skills, responsibilities and social value of these roles, alongside clear pathways for women to progress to leadership and decision-making positions within the care sector;

72. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to further invest in high-quality vocational training and strengthen the recognition of skills acquired through formal and informal caregiving by integrating these skills into lifelong learning and upskilling policies, while also considering a certification process or other mechanisms for cross-border recognition of qualifications; encourages the adoption of digital health tools to boost the digital skills of care workers, such as the provision of remote support including telecare or video consultations; underlines that skills are not only acquired through formal education and that policy frameworks must acknowledge and validate alternative pathways to skills development; calls on the Member States to facilitate measures for a gradual and flexible (re)integration into the labour market of workers who have taken a long career break to provide care to relatives, including through upskilling and reskilling;

73. Underlines the employment opportunities that entrepreneurship can create in the care sector and stresses the importance of supporting women in the transition from informal caregivers to entrepreneurs in the care sector; urges the Member States to provide tailored entrepreneurial training pathways, simplified administrative procedures for the establishment of women-owned small and medium-sized enterprises and for self-employed women in the sector, and facilitated access to dedicated microcredit, recognising the economic and social value of such professional transitions;

74. Calls on the Commission to use the Union of Skills to boost education, training and lifelong learning in sectors with EU-wide labour market shortages, such as care work, ensuring upskilling and reskilling opportunities for all professional care workers and recognising vocational education and training diplomas;

75. Calls for the creation of a European carers’ statute to address the specific needs of formal carers, -such as recognition of skills acquired through care work, thereby integrating care workers, PHS, user-employers and institutional care in a common EU framework and definition, which would guarantee minimum standards of recognition and protection for carers across the Member States and reduce inequalities between them;

76. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to align the EU health strategy with the EU care strategy and foster synergies between EU4Health and other financing opportunities for the care sector in order to connect healthcare and social care systems and provide seamless support, especially for chronic conditions among the most vulnerable individuals;

77. Calls for a European action plan that contributes to closing the gender care gap and to supporting both formal and informal carers; calls, in this regard, for support for single parents and families in vulnerable situations, including those facing intersectional discrimination and compounded care needs and/or high intensity demands, focusing on social protection coverage, affordable, accessible and high-quality childcare, improved work-life balance, affordable and high-quality long-term care services, better working conditions in the care sector and the promotion of equality; calls, therefore, for this plan to focus on access to employment and training – including in digital skills, social protection coverage, care infrastructure and long-term services, childcare, PHS, psychosocial support and improved work flexibility;

78. Notes that proper access to reproductive healthcare and abortion services can help parents avoid the stress of unexpected pregnancies and contribute to family planning; calls on the Member States to provide affordable access to such services;

79. Calls on the Member States to fully utilise EU funds, such as the Recovery and Resilience Facility, EU4Health, the European Social Fund Plus and the European Regional Development Fund, to develop accessible, affordable and high-quality care services and facilities across all age groups, from early childhood to long-term care for older people and persons with disabilities; underlines the need to integrate the term ‘support’ alongside ‘care’ so as to fully capture the diversity of services and the rights-based perspective that guides them;

80. Welcomes the Commission’s announcement of a comprehensive European Care Deal to be published in 2027, thereby renewing the European care strategy as a more ambitious and coherent framework;

81. Calls on the Commission to address both formal and informal carers by promoting affordable and high-quality childcare, educational after-school programmes and long-term care services; stresses that it should take into account the recommendations included in this report, inter alia, to facilitate the recognition of skills and qualifications, support skills development, career progression and investment in care, and improve working and living conditions by utilising EU funds to promote fair employment and high-quality care;

82. Highlights that greater investment in public health and social care, including workers’ wages and training, is essential to improve recruitment and retention in order to secure quality jobs that increase the attractiveness of working in the care sector;

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83. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.