AGE Platform Europe is part of 20 civil society organisations and trade unions that co-signed a statement on 26 March 2025, calling for the Commission to live up to its ambitions for reform in long-term care.
The Council recommendation on long-term care, adopted in 2022, urges Member States to increase the quality, accessibility, and affordability of long-term care, improve the working conditions of formal carers, better support informal carers, and develop social protection for long-term care.
In the mission letters of the new European Commission, long-term care is only mentioned from the perspective of tackling workforce shortages in the missions of Executive Vice-President Roxana Mînzatu. This is an important challenge, but just one aspect of the issue, and Ms Mînzatu has called for a European Care Deal during her hearings.
The joint statement unites civil society organisations and trade unions representing people with disabilities, those supported by care services and their families, informal carers, care workers and cooperatives, and service providers for care and services for persons with disabilities part of the social economy. The alliance makes recommendations on strengthening prevention, assisting Member States to provide care services through the European Semester and public spending rules, support the development of high-quality support services and measures for informal carers, support care service provides in delivering rights-based, high-quality, accessible and affordable care, revise the directives on public procurement to ensure that price alone is not decisive about who gets to deliver care services, investigate and prevent the causes of abuse and neglect in care settings, address workforce shortages and improve working conditions, increase up-skilling and re-skilling of the long-term care workforce, address undeclared work and exploitation in care, tackle financial speculation and recognise the importance of different care and support services.
The signatories propose a European Long-Term Care Platform as part of the revised European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan.
