For all children and teenagers to have happy and healthy lives, some need extra support in areas like access to education, healthcare, nutrition or housing.
To help with this, EU countries have national plans, guided by the European Child Guarantee. The EU is reviewing the Guarantee and plans, so it was important to hear from young EU citizens under the age of 18 on how they think things are going in their countries.
Their responses, together with input from adults of each country, will be used to review the Guarantee, and improve the national plans in all.
Who did we hear from?
- 41,736 children aged 8-17
- from all EU countries
- through an online survey, 26 focus groups and 45 individual interviews
The full survey results and report will be available in the coming weeks. While we are waiting, here are a few of the many thousands of suggestions received from children.
Living our best school lives!
"Ensuring that everyone is treated equally. And ensuring that young people have a say in what happens at school, because when we have a say in what happens, we make choices that make us more happy."
"In particular, there should be more activities and daycare/school places for children with disabilities; it should not be forgotten that they have even fewer opportunities and are often very neglected."
"Create a friendly, safe atmosphere, less pressure and grading "for grades' sake", more psychological support and open conversations, school as a place where students feel seen and important."
"Actually interesting and useful curriculum, more ways to practice what we have learned – put knowledge into real-life situations."
Healthy food for everyone
"Recognising food as a fundamental right and ensuring that the state guarantees no one has to suffer from hunger. Food must not be used for profit."
"Make unhealthy food expensive, lower fees and make healthy food cheaper and teach children about healthy food that tastes good and is cheap."
"Leftover food shouldn't be thrown away but distributed for free to those who really need it, and this would have to be carefully monitored."
"When teaching children about healthy foods make sure not to make them feel bad or guilty, maybe if they are taught about what foods are healthy rather than what's unhealthy they'll be more inclined to try it."
"More commercials that include all the information about how important eating healthy is and what benefits it carries. Kids and teens spend a lot of their time on social media and many commercials like those, on platforms like YouTube, Tik Tok or Instagram could result positively."
More thoughts on what matters...
"Every child deserves a home, internet, food, resources, healthcare, and education regardless of their ethnic, religious, or other group, but not every child gets them - this needs to change."
"It is important that children and youths are more involved in decision-making since that at the end it will affect the life they live by giving them the space and opportunity to share their thoughts and views and be listened to."
"I suffered from bullying, and I don't want others to go through the traumatic experience that it is. So, to improve the school environment, we should teach children from an early age that bullying is wrong and that it can hurt others around us.."
"It would be possible to add more questions about mental health and how to prevent mental illness in children and teenagers, as well as how to provide mental help to young people."
"Do more research to get the opinions of children. You can also organize big campaigns in each country so that children from all the schools in the country gather and learn about all the things the research said."
If you are under 18 and want to talk to someone about how you are feeling, please speak to a trusted adult or call a helpline for children in your country. They can get you the help and support you need.