From Crisis to Capacity: The European Care Transition

This session examines care as a cross-sectoral priority underpinning the social contract. Rather than managing a care crisis, we explore what a genuine care transition would require, comparable in scope to digitalisation or the green transition.

Care is where Europe's cohesion is made or frayed. The resources that enable care are limited, and service expansion alone cannot close the gap: the social fabric, between citizens, families, and third places, matters just as much as. This requires redesigning policies so that the resources of care (time, relationships, responsibilities, individual strengths and institutions) can actually be mobilised.

Participants will examine three levers: the time contract (how laws and workplaces give people room to care without sacrificing income), the relational contract (how neighbourhoods and shared spaces sustain everyday bonds of support) and the accountability contract (how institutions guarantee dignified care and distribute its burdens fairly).

In collaboration with Demos Helsinki