Long-term care social protection models in the EU
The report examines long-term care systems for people aged 65 or above in the 27 EU Member States. It reveals that long-term care challenges have become increasingly salient in recent decades in EU Member States’ policy and political agendas. At the same time, in many countries long-term care policies and systems are still less developed than other social protection branches. Furthermore, the expansion of long-term care policies has to face a trilemma: ensuring an adequate coverage of needs with affordable high-quality formal services; determining the extent to which meeting long-term care needs depends on informal carers, while ensuring informal care remains a choice not a necessity and informal carers are adequately supported; and seeking to step up investments and reforms at a time when public budgets are under pressure and cannot easily be expanded. The report shows that EU Member States respond differently to this LTC trilemma and identifies six social protection models for long-term care that emerge from the analysis.