In her State of the Union address on 16 September 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen confirmed that the Commission would launch a European Care Deal to address the challenges linked to Europe’s demographic changes. She placed it alongside investment in regions and housing measures, and said that care is not a privilege but a right.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has announced a new European Care Deal, putting childcare, long-term care and the pressures facing families higher on the European Union’s political agenda. Speaking in the European Parliament on Wednesday, 16 September, she said the initiative would address the challenges created by Europe’s ageing population and demographic change. “Care is not a privilege. Housing is not a privilege. They are rights,” she told MEPs.
What could the European Care Deal mean for domestic and home care?
The President framed the Care Deal alongside investment in Europe’s regions and the “right to stay”: the ability to remain in the community where one lives. For many older people, persons with disabilities and families, that right depends on quality support at home. This is the daily reality of the domestic workers and their household employers that EFFE represents: childcare at home, help with daily living, support for older people.
The Care Deal will aim to strengthen the availability and accessibility of care solutions, notably to ease the pressure on carers. It will also have to tackle workforce challenges: recruitment, retention and working conditions.
The announcement comes at a critical moment. Ageing populations are driving up demand for long-term care, while many countries already face staff shortages, recruitment and retention difficulties, and pressure on the availability and quality of services. The Personal and Household Services (PHS) sectors account for an estimated 4% of total employment in the EU, yet remain among the least recognised.
The 2026 PHS Employment Monitor, published in June by the sector’s European social partners (EFFAT, EFFE, EFSI and UNI Europa), makes this clear. It draws on more than 8,000 responses from 33 countries, from workers, household employers, service users and provider organisations. Workers remain stuck in institutional grey areas, rarely treated as workers like any other or in line with the value they provide. Nearly half of home care workers have considered leaving the sector in the past three years, mainly because of low pay. Provider organisations struggle to recruit because of low wages and a lack of benefits, and face competition from undeclared work.
For households, the problem mirrors this. Nearly 80% of service users say the cost of PHS services is a concern. Without enough support, some turn to cheaper undeclared services, at the expense of workers’ protection and service quality. The lack of professionalisation also affects the quality of services as perceived by household employers. It is a vicious circle that only structured public action can break.
Yet the Monitor also shows what unites the sector: workers, employers and users share the view that the PHS sectors deserve greater institutional respect. This common ground, backed by robust European social dialogue and many creative national and regional policy efforts, is a valuable foundation on which to build the Care Deal.
For EFFE, this is a long-standing conviction: structuring the domestic and home care sector is the only way to reach the quality, affordability and accessibility targets of the European Care Strategy. Individual childcare at home, for instance, is a solution in its own right, sitting between collective childcare and a parent leaving the labour market. And as the Commission itself stresses, wider access to quality childcare and long-term care opens real opportunities for women, who carry a disproportionate share of unpaid domestic and care work, to remain in or return to employment.
Next steps
EFFE will be following this initiative closely in the context of the renewed action plan of the European Pillar of Social Rights, and will contribute to the public consultations, working closely with its partners. The Care Deal cannot deliver on its promises without fully recognising domestic work & home care as a pillar of care systems. That means structuring the sector: giving workers a status and employment conditions that match their role, recognising household employers and supporting them so that declared employment remains affordable, and tackling undeclared work, which undermines both workers and service quality. We call on the European Commission to design a Care Deal that addresses the structural underinvestment in care, improves pay and working conditions, strengthens collective bargaining and social dialogue, and responds to the need for recognition voiced by PHS stakeholders in the PHS Monitor. Only then can home care, still too often in the shadows, deliver for both the people who need care and the workers who provide it.
You can read the speech in all EU languages here.