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On February 7 and 8, Heads of state and government will meet in order to hopefully find an agreement on the EU budget for the years 2014-2020. They met for the first time last November at the EU Summit but negotiations were was not successful.

A few days ago Social Platform sent another Letter to the leaders of the 27 member states and to the three main institutions: the European Council, the Commission and the European Parliament. Our demands have not changed since November.

•     We are calling on member states not to reduce the overall budget proposed by the Commission, otherwise the objectives of the Europe 2020 Strategy – including the employment, education and poverty targets – and of the Lisbon Treaty will not be met. The budget proposed by the Commission represents only around 1% of EU-27 GDP: this means 67 cents on average per day and per citizen to finance the budget.
•     In particular we oppose cuts to the budget for the cohesion policy (the cuts currently proposed amount to 18 billion €).
•     Finally we are asking to ensure the minimum allocation of 25% of the cohesion policy funds to the European Social Fund and earmark 20% of the ESF to social inclusion and the fight against poverty.

For those who have followed us it is clear that our demands have not changed since August. But what has changed on the ground? Unfortunately the number of people living in poverty in the EU has increased by 4 million in only on year time (from 116 millions of Europeans living in poverty in to 120). Also unemployment is the highest in 15 years: 26 million people are out of job. Let’s hope that EU leaders consider this painful situation and do not lose the opportunity of the decisions on the EU budget to opt for a more people-centred Europe.