EU funds must be used to develop community-based alternatives in 2014-2020

The European Union is preparing to implement the next seven years of the Structural and Investment Funding. The framework put in place for this new programming period represents a historic opportunity to protect the rights of Europe’s most excluded people - those living in institutional care.  For the first time, the new Regulations for the EU Cohesion Policy investment, adopted last December by the European Council and the European Parliament include specific references to support the “transition from institutional to community-based care”.

The European Expert Group on the Transition from Institutional to Community-Based care (EEG) welcomes this historic breakthrough in the EU’s legislative landscape, which should improve the situation of children and adults in institutional care or at risk of institutionalization and facilitate real effective innovation in the social services sector. The EEG looks forward to further developing this partnership with the national authorities and the EU institutions in the new programming period, to ensure that the potential of the new Regulations to deliver major improvements in the lives of people in institutional care or at risk of institutionalization is fully realized. With this objective, the  European Expert Group on the Transition from Institutional to Community-Based care  urges the European Commission:

· To provide guidance to the member states, in order to ensure that the priority of supporting the transition from institutional to community-based care, as clearly stated in the Regulations is fully implemented in the new programming period;

· to ensure that the commitments to transition from institutional to community-based care are clearly described in the partnership agreements and operational programmes of all member states;

· to ensure that implementation of these commitments is effectively monitored at the national level and by the European Commission, with a meaningful involvement of all the relevant stakeholders, in line with the European Code of Conduct on Partnership, and;

· to ensure that the Country Specific Recommendations (CSR) based on National Reform Plans are coherent with and used as instruments to achieve the objectives outlined in the new regulations.

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