Caritas Europa: Dutch EU Presidency pledges to push poverty up on EU Council agenda
Mrs Jetta Klijnsma, the Netherlands’ Secretary of State for Social Affairs and Employment, promised yesterday to “work even harder to push poverty up on the EU Council agenda”, during the presentation of Caritas Europa’s new report “End poverty in Europe – Our solutions to make it happen”.
“This report is very important. I am very glad about it and recognise many things in it. We have to emphasise poverty in Europe. Thus we have put fighting poverty high in the agenda. June’s Council conclusions will include lots of best practices from all EU countries,” said Mrs Klijnsma on behalf of the Dutch EU Presidency.
In its new report End Poverty in Europe – Our solutions to make it happen, Caritas Europa presents 18 recommendations to tackle poverty in Europe and to prevent more people from falling into it, in particular the five groups identified in the report as being most at risk of poverty and requiring most urgent political action: long-term unemployed; working poor; single parents; migrants, asylum seekers and refugees; and children from the previous groups.
“If you live in poverty, is not just that you don’t have money, but also that you cannot participate in society, this is particularly difficult for children,” said Mrs Klijnsma.
Caritas Europa’s Secretary General, Jorge Nuño Mayer, proposed Ms Klijnsma to “be our ambassador of the poor and to really push for having the fight against poverty high on the agenda of the EU Council”.
“I already do it, but I will work even harder to push poverty up on the agenda,” answered Mrs Klijnsma.
At Caritas Europa, we believe that Europe has the capacity and tools to not only lift 20 million poor out of poverty by 2020, as stipulated in the Europe 2020 Strategy, but to also truly move the 123 million people living in poverty out of this heinous trap.
