The 20% Campaign “EU Money for Poverty Reduction NOW!” (2012-2013)
From June 2012 till November 2013, EAPN with 19 other social NGOs ran the Campaign EU Money for Poverty Reduction NOW! to back the European Commission’s proposal, welcomed by all social NGOs and also supported by the European Parliament, to allocate:
- 25% of the Cohesion Policy budget to the European Social Fund and
- 20% of the ESF to social inclusion and poverty reduction
In the framework of our campaign, we launched a petition on Avaaz.org that successfully collected around 12,500 signatures.
EAPN launched its 20% campaign on 15.05.12 with a petition to collect signatures on http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/EU_Money_for_Poverty_Reduction_NOW_1/.
On the 2013-2020 programming period, this petition called on Member States to back the European Commission’s proposal to allocate 25% of the Cohesion Policy budget to the European Social Fund and 20% of the ESF to social inclusion and poverty reduction, welcomed by all social NGOs and also supported by the European Parliament.
We managed to get 12451 signatures to the petition.
We also used social media: Facebook and Twitter, as well as a leaflet in Word for EAPN members to easily translate it. (Download here the leaflet in word document).
See our campaign’s page when the campaign was still running, with video of Elizsabeth Morin Chartier, EUropean Parliament Rapporteur to the ESF.
The outcome was a success. Although the minimum budget for the ESF is lower than what we have been calling for (at least 23,1% of the overall Cohesion Policy budget instead of 25%), this budget remains stable (i.e at least 75 EUR bn) and secured in a more global context of cuts in the EU budget. And more importantly, the 20% have been agreed which is a major achievement and a clear recognition that the ESF is the main EU Fund to deliver on the poverty reduction target. This means that at least 15 EUR bn will have to be dedicated to poverty reduction/ social inclusion by Member States in the next programming period 2014-2020.
Contact persons: Vincent (vincent.caron@eapn.eu) Policy Officer and Nellie (nellie.epinat@eapn.eu) Communications Officer.
