APPEAL
“The European institutions and the Member States” should “enhance their social policies in order to combat the structural causes of poverty, promoting integral human development and putting an end to poverty in the EU”. Caritas Europa and the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) made this appeal today, ahead of the third World Day of the Poor, in a series of four videos including several requests. Caritas and COMECE ask that “at least 30% of the European Social Fund+” be dedicated to “social inclusion and the fight against poverty”. They also stress the importance for the EU institutions to “develop a strategy for 2030 outlining a roadmap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and translate the European Pillar of Social Right into concrete policies and actions”. “Nearly a fifth of the population in the European Union live in poverty or at risk of poverty”, COMECE Secretary General, Fr. Manuel Barrios Prieto, recalls in one of the videos posted today. As the EU’s new financial framework is being prepared, the opportunity should be seized to put poverty on the agenda and address it. Among the expectations, Maria Nyman, Secretary General of Caritas Europa, also cites the “proposal by the European Commission” to introduce a “minimum wage”. She says she hopes that it will become “a means to put an end to in-work poverty”, that is to say, to the situation of those who work without getting enough money for living.
