EAPN launched its latest EU Poverty Watch Report, “Towards a systemic approach to social protection”.
Poverty has remained at considerable levels in Europe in recent years whilst progress towards meeting the EU’s 2030 poverty reduction targets remained limited. In this report, EAPN tries to highlight the need for significantly systemic efforts. Additionally, EAPN shares an update of the persistent poverty rates, in its various manifestations.
The absence of a systemic approach is evident throughout the various stages of the policy cycle of social rights instruments. Among the most salient issues, our 2024 Poverty Watch addresses:
- The limited involvement of those living in poverty and social exclusion—both during the design of social protection policies and assessment of their impact.
- Concerns about the coherence of social protection policies with the basic principles governing our democracies, as well as with other policies.
- The coverage and financing of social protection schemes.
- The growing number of challenges that hinder their protective function, such as the Fourth Industrial Revolution, climate change, ageing societies, war, and the shrinking of democracies worldwide.
“Even though I worked for 43 years, non-stop, with a couple of sick days throughout my life, I now depend on the kindness of my children to lend me money until my pension comes—does that make any sense? My wife has been working for two more years, so fortunately we live on her salary, and I didn’t have any debts before. I handed in all the papers on time, more than a year ago, and every time they miss something, some paper that I must manually chase around the city, even though they say they are networked and that they are great with these new IT technologies."
