The European Care Strategy starts off by stating that everyone provides or receives care at some time in their lives. This is indeed true, but high-quality care for all is still not a reality for many in Europe and this was one of the push factors behind the strategy.

In our opinion on the strategy, we focus on a few key points. First of all, we emphasise that all care solutions need to respect individual choices, and by this we mean that a person or a family should be able to choose between care provided in institutional settings, at home or in the community, and nobody should be forced to make do with one form of care because of a lack of alternatives. 

The gender equality dimension and how to tackle male-female stereotypes are central to the strategy as well as to our recommendations. We reiterate that efforts should be made to incentivise more men to join the care workforce and to ensure better sharing of care responsibilities within households.

The strategy ticks the right box by acknowledging that formal and informal care go hand-in-hand, that neither of them are exclusive and that both need support. Home care is often provided by informal carers. The majority of them are women and relatives of the person in need of care, who carry most of the burden, with the impact this entails on their professional and personal lives. We recommend identifying these informal carers and mapping their needs to effectively target them. We also see potential in skills validation schemes to facilitate recognition of their "invisible work". 

In addition, we reiterate our proposal to launch a European Care Guarantee, in order to ensure life-long access to affordable quality healthcare and care services for everyone living in the EU. This instrument would contribute to addressing care deficits and promote decent working conditions for carers, including informal carers.

Finally, I'd like to stress that we also focus on the implementation, monitoring and evaluation aspects of the two Council proposals on early childhood education and care and long-term care as part of the strategy adopted by the Council in December 2022. We call for a mid-term review of the general objectives and of the specific targets, including the Barcelona targets.