More than ten years ago, in March 2002, a meeting of the European Council in Barcelona established a set of targets known as the 'Barcelona targets'. Member States adopted targets to improve the rate of employment of parents of young children and, in particular, women in an effort to achieve greater gender equality in the workforce. This initiative and the material in this report can also be seen in the context of the EU's social inclusion objective, as parental employment, and particularly maternal employment, has been shown to be the main safeguard against child poverty (Lichter & Eggebeen 1994). Specifically, the intention was to encourage Member States to 'remove disincentives to female labour force participation and strive, taking into account the demand for childcare facilities and in line with national patterns of provision, to provide childcare by 2010 to at least 90 per cent of children between 3 years old and the mandatory school age and at least 33 per cent of children under 3 years of age' (Barcelona European Council 2002). The European Commission reported on a mid-term assessment of progress towards the achievement of these targets in 2008 (European Commission 2008). It showed that the majority of Member States were yet to achieve the Barcelona targets and that some would require considerable further efforts in order to achieve them. This report provides a current analysis of the progress towards meeting these targets. It initially examines the progress towards reaching the Barcelona targets by comparing and then extending the results presented in 2008. However, it also extends the previous 2008 analysis in a number of ways, namely it examines: the impact of parenthood on employment, public spending on childcare and the cost, affordability and quality of childcare. The report also summarises the extent to which the Barcelona target have been met by Member States by the agreed deadline of 2010. Where possible, data were examined for 27 EU Member States and where available, EFTA countries Norway and Iceland. (author abstract)