Use of childcare in the EU Member States and progress towards the Barcelona targets

More than ten years ago, in March 2002, a meeting of the European Council in Barcelona established a set of targets known as the ‘Barcelona targets’. Member States adopted targets to improve the rate of employment of parents of young children and, in particular, women in an effort to achieve greater gender equality in the workforce. This initiative and the material in this report can also be seen in the context of the EU’s social inclusion objective, as parental employment, and particularly maternal employment, has been shown to be the main safeguard against child poverty (Lichter & Eggebeen 1994).