Meeting of EU ministers for Family Affairs
- Date: 4.2.2009 — 5.2.2009
- Venue: Prague - Czech Republic
- Category: Informal Ministerial Meetings
- Theme: Employment, Soc. Pol., Health and Cons. Affairs
On 4 and 5 February, EU Ministers for Family Affairs will head for Prague to discuss forms of early childcare in relation to the implementation of the Barcelona objectives.
The meeting will be followed by a Presidency conference on parental childcare and employment policy on 5-6 February. The Presidency aims to strengthen the perception of domestic parental care of small children as a form of employment in its own right.
The meeting of ministers will be officially launched on Wednesday, 4 February at a welcome dinner in the Kampa Museum. The next day, the debate on the Barcelona objectives in pre-school childcare with respect to the best interests of the child and early childcare will begin in the Prague Congress Centre with an opening speech by Labour and Social Affairs Minister Petr Nečas.
The Barcelona objectives, fixed in 2002, are purely quantitative provisions stipulating that caring services should be available for 90% of children from the age of 3 until school age and 33% of children younger than 3 years by 2010.
The Czech Presidency wants to highlight the qualitative aspects of early childcare, to stress the best interests of the child and to incorporate these aspects in relevant policies.
Conference on Parental Childcare and Employment Policy - “conflict or complementarity?”
Besides Minister Petr Nečas and European Commissioner Vladimír Špidla several other figures of political and academic life will participate in the ensuing thematic conference of the Czech Presidency (5 – 6 February). These will include Italian Minister for Equal Opportunities Mara Carfagna, French Secretary of State responsible for family affairs Nadine Morano, Paul Kirchhof from Heidelberg University in Germany, Spiridon Paraskewopoulos from the University of Leipzig and Lubomír Mlčoch from the Charles University in Prague.
A press conference on the thematic conference on parental childcare and employment policy is tentatively scheduled for 5 February at 14:10 in the Prague Congress Centre. It will be attended by Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Petr Nečas and European Commissioner responsible for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Vladimír Špidla.
Journalists can obtain accreditation for the press conference on the website of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic by clicking on the following link: http://www.mpsv.cz/cs/6054.
Contact:
- Jana Říhová, spokesperson for the Presidency, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs of the Czech Republic
- tel.: +420 221 922 249, GSM: +420 725 761 147 ; e-mail: [email protected] , www.mpsv.cz
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