News

On November 26-27, 2013, the European Commission organised the third Annual Convention of the European Platform Against Poverty and Social Exclusion. With the continuous increase of people living in or at risk of poverty, affecting currently almost 125 million people in Europe, it is clear that we are further than ever in reaching the EU's target of lifting 20 million people out of poverty by 2020. President of Social Platform, Heather Roy, therefore addressed the Convention by voicing the need for Consistent, Inclusive and Co-operative Governance in order to finally address poverty and social inclusion in Europe.

Our concern is that what we are seeing at the moment is that current policies and European processes are insufficient to reverse the breakdown of social Europe. There needs to be much more ambitious and quick action and the European Commission must use the tools and processes at its disposal to put pressure on member states to deliver on social policies. Consistent governance means that we must ensure the coherence of policies set at a European and indeed a member state level. Secondly, we need to ensure inclusive governance: we cannot go on with the current policy approach and expect it to bring about a solution for the still increasing amount of people living in poverty and experiencing exclusion. Thirdly we need to have co-operative governance: policy making and implementation must be democratic and legitimate through the meaningful and structured involvement of civil society and people who experience poverty.

During the Opening of the Convention, both Commission President Barroso and Council President Van Rompuy acknowledged that with one out of four people living in poverty – which is worse than before the crisis – currently we are clearly not delivering on the European poverty target. They were of the opinion that the EU, together with the member states, can and has the responsibility to deliver more than it is today, to live up to their commitment to lift people out of poverty. They called upon all stakeholders, in particular civil society, to work together on this.President Barroso is putting his hopes on the Youth Employment Package, with the Youth Guarantee, the Social Investment Package, with better performing active inclusion strategies, and the social dimension of the Economic and Monetary Union. Concerning this last one, the Commission recently published its first Scoreboard of employment and social indicators that, as Barroso said, "allows detecting and tackling in a timely way the most serious employment and social problems across the member states". He also said to consider the social dimension as an inherent part of Europe as a whole. President Van Rompuy highlighted "the importance of monitoring and taking more clearly into account social divergences within the economic and monetary union" and voiced the need for "improving profoundly and broadening our inclusion policies in our member states", as essential lever to meet the target. At the end of the Convention, Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Laszlo Andor also voices the commitment to further cooperate with civil society to improve social policies for social recovery.

The question is now if and how the EU will honour the commitments of the Commission and the Council President as we cannot afford to just wait for change to come around. We need to act now and take the necessary steps to reverse the current deterioration of social Europe. The next opportunity for member states to act will be in December when the EPSCO and European Council will discuss and agree the best way to use the Social Scoreboard concretely in coordinating economic, social and employment policies and to support the social dimension of the EMU. Next year, there will be the launch of the mid-term review of the EU 2020 Strategy which should include the assessment of progress towards the Strategy's objectives, including the poverty target.

Read the full speech of Heather Roy, addressing the Convention during the Plenary

Read the full speech of President Barroso

Read the full speech of President Van Rompuy

PRead the first EC conclusions and results for the Convention

2013-12-03