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There are several reasons to worry about the EU’s determination to lift 20 million people out of poverty. I guess for me it started with the first speeches of the President of the European Commission: the original online version of Jean-Claude Juncker’s speech to the European Parliament on 15 July 2014 stated that “the fight against poverty must be a priority” (page 7). By 22 October this sentence had been removed (page 8). Was it already a sign?

Just over one year later, on 30 September 2015, the College of Commissioners held a policy debate on the Europe 2020 Strategy which includes the reduction of poverty as one of its five headline targets to be reached by 2020. The first question put to Commissioners was whether they consider that the Europe 2020 strategy is obsolete and should be abolished. Fortunately they disagreed with this and chose to keep the strategy and its poverty target. They also said that they wanted to focus on implementation tools.

The question remains how the EU should go about reaching the strategy’s targets. Commissioners suggested the use of a financial tool – the multiannual financial framework – and a political one – the European Semester, which coordinates the national economic and fiscal policies. The debate could have been the opportunity for the Commission to commit to finally using powerful instruments to alleviate poverty. However, the President of the Commission had the last word – “he wanted to avoid adding a new process and additional priorities to what already existed, as this would detract from the clarity of the rationalisation of the exercise”. In other words, poverty will not be included in the Semester process, as was originally planned in 2010.

The Commission is not alone in being blamed for abandoning the poverty target; there is a lack of political will from Member States to reverse the curve on poverty. They consider anti-poverty policies to be a national competence and therefore the Commission should not be interfering in this area.

What astounds me is that the EU committed in 2010 to achieving concrete results, but in actual fact poverty has not decreased but increased. Maintaining the Europe 2020 headline target on poverty as window dressing in an attempt to convince social NGOs that the EU is taking action will not suffice.

Let’s engage,

Pierre Baussand, Director