Glossary:Barcelona Summit
The Barcelona Summit of the European Council on 15-16 March 2002 in Barcelona was the third annual spring meeting, after the Lisbon Summit in 2000 and the Stockholm Summit of 2001, to focus on social issues in the European Union.
While the Lisbon Council meeting set concrete employment targets to be achieved by 2010 and the Stockholm Summit complemented this with intermediate targets, the Barcelona Summit concentrated largely on assessing progress on achieving these targets, suggesting minor changes to the European employment strategy, strengthening recommendations on pay developments and looking at employment contract legislation again.
In addition, however, it set concrete targets in two new areas:
- the provision, by 2010, of childcare for 90% of children aged between three and the mandatory school age and for 33% of children aged below three, in order to encourage female labour market participation;
- achieving a progressive increase of around five years in the average actual age at which people stop working in the EU by 2010, by making continued employment more attractive for older workers.