European high-level conference
In 2010, as part of the Europe 2020 Strategy, Member States agreed to have at least 20 million fewer people in or at risk of poverty and social exclusion by 2020. However, the evidence suggests that we have moved away from achieving this target as there are now 7.8 million more people living in poverty or social exclusion across Europe than 4 years ago. In this context, a mid-term review of the Strategy is now taking place and the European Commission organised a conference on 9 October to activate stakeholders to contribute to the process.
Current state of play – the impact of austerity on social services
Taking stock of where we are, the discussions looked at the impact of austerity, the choice of indicators and the consequences of such choices. Ana Lima from the Spanish Council of Social Work argued that, under austerity measures, the quality of social services provision decreased drastically and Spanish social work reverted to a model of social emergency. More national perspectives were brought from Italy and the Netherlands – Franca Biondelli from the Italian government spoke of activating measures for unemployed parents or people with disabilities, and Mark Jacobs from the Dutch government emphasised employment as the best way out of poverty; he also described the measures taken in the Netherlands to reduce the number of people aged 0-64 in jobless households. Looking at the bigger picture in Europe, Maurizio Ferrera from Milan University claimed that it is difficult to carry out a cross-comparison of the poverty indicators used by Member States because countries are free to choose their national poverty indicators – some (Italy, Poland) applied one of the agreed EU indicators, while others (UK, Sweden, Germany) used a different indicator altogether.
The way forward – performance, data and local implementation
Paving the way forward, the discussions looked at social policies performance and local implementation, though there were few participants from the local level, where implementation is actually key. Attending the meeting, the European Social Network (ESN) Policy Director, Alfonso Lara Montero, commented that it is crucial to move beyond current employment indicators and adopt a more sophisticated set of social policy indicators; there are societal groups that are more affected by poverty and social exclusion than others, and most countries already collect data on these groups – for example long-term unemployed, people with disabilities (employed or unemployed, receiving an allowance) or children in care. The EU should explore aggregating these data at EU level, as well as aim to have common definitions of each indicator and overcome legal barriers for data collection (for instance, regarding ethnic minorities), he added.
Local examples – how to use EU Funds to reduce poverty
A workshop aimed to address how local governments and NGOs can connect and make better use of EU funds to reduce poverty and social exclusion. The session featured only one example of a local social inclusion project for Roma co-funded by EU Funds in the Municipality of Kavarna, Bulgaria. However, there are many more projects across Europe. For example, regional authorities in Spain are working with NGOs to support young people leaving care in their transition to adulthood. The region of Mazovia in Poland, in cooperation with the Warsaw School of Economics, third sector organisations and local authorities, has developed a tool to calculate different courses of action in social policy. These local experiences are the best source for learning how local authorities and NGOs can make better use of EU funds for social inclusion – we highlighted more examples from ESN members in our recent guideline on the use of EU Structural and Investment Funds.
The European Commission launched a public consultation for the mid-term review of the EU 2020 Strategy. Drawing on ESN members' expertise, the European Social Network published a response - read more here.