Developing a new EU anti-poverty strategy

The European Parliament adopted by 385 votes to 141, with 53 abstentions, a resolution on developing a new EU anti-poverty strategy.

A strategy aimed at eradicating poverty

Members are concerned that in 2024, 93.3 million people in the EU were still at risk of poverty or social exclusion, including 20 million children – one in four – and 27 million people were experiencing acute material and social deprivation. They are calling for a comprehensive approach to prevention to address the root causes of the problem and tackle the multidimensional aspects of poverty and social exclusion as well as their interrelationships, with regard to access to quality jobs, social protection and minimum income, public services, education, early intervention for children, healthcare, food, housing, energy, and taxation.

Recalling that poverty disproportionally affects marginalised and vulnerable groups of society (women, Roma and Travellers, people experiencing homelessness, children in institutional care, LGBTQIA+ individuals, older and younger people, persons with disabilities), the resolution stressed the need for targeted measures to address this, paying particular attention to those most vulnerable to extreme poverty.

Members called on the Commission to present a comprehensive, ambitious and adequately funded anti-poverty strategy that includes the following general objectives and guidelines:

(a) recognition of poverty as a violation of human dignity undermining the full realisation of human rights and as a basis for the promotion of a rights-based approach in line with international legal frameworks;

(b) the setting of the goal of urgently eradicating poverty by 2035 at the latest, building on the standards of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the EPSR, while also developing interim progress indicators, clear milestones and a monitoring framework enabling adequate coordination of policies and funding needs;

(c) adopt a comprehensive, people-centred and integrated life-cycle approach to long-term anti-poverty policies, combining universal and targeted measures starting in childhood and throughout all stages of life;

(d) participation by people with lived experience of poverty in defining, implementing and evaluating policies that affect them, in an inclusive, effective and transparent manner that goes hand in hand with a methodology and capacity building;

(e) a fundamental and horizontal principle of non-discrimination throughout the anti-poverty strategy to tackle structural inequalities and societal stigmas rooted in discrimination that exacerbate poverty and social exclusion;

(f) the allocation of adequate and sustained budgetary resources for anti-poverty measures through the MFF and national budgetary mechanisms.

Fair working conditions and a more equitable distribution of income and wealth

Parliament called on the Commission and Member States to strengthen their active labour market policies, particularly for those furthest from employment, and to promote policies aimed at protecting and promoting workers' rights, quality jobs, and fair wages, including equal pay for equal work for women and men. To end in-work poverty, Members called for improved access to childcare services and appropriate vocational support.

Parliament formulated the following recommendations:

- strengthen public employment services, training pathways and job search assistance systems for people living in poverty and vulnerable groups, including the long-term unemployed and the low-skilled;

- support women's entrepreneurship and self-employment opportunities, particularly in rural and island areas;

- ensure that education is accessible to children with disabilities;

- significantly increase public investment in policies guaranteeing social rights, ensuring universal access to quality public services as well as goods and services of general economic and social interest, such as decent housing, food, water, sanitation, energy, transport, communications and cultural and leisure activities;

- promote a housing policy that guarantees universal access to decent and affordable housing and that includes specific measures to combat homelessness;

- accelerate efforts to close the gender gap in employment and pensions;

- guarantee universal access to affordable and quality public health care for all and guarantee all women the right to sexual and reproductive health care;

- tackle youth poverty and socioeconomic inequalities by strengthening the Youth Guarantee as a key instrument to promote the inclusion of young people in the labour market.

A strategy with child poverty at its core

Parliament called for greater support to guarantee access to effective and free healthcare, education, early childhood education and care, effective access to adequate and decent housing, and healthy nutrition for all children in need. To this end, Members called for the creation of a substantial dedicated budget of at least EUR 20 billion for the European Child Guarantee. Members should allocate at least 5 % of ESF+ funds to specific projects and structural investments combating child poverty, with at least 10 % earmarked for the Member States with child poverty and social exclusion levels exceeding the EU average.