What can the European Union change about this?
There are currently an estimated 75 million Europeans at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Being at risk of poverty does not mean actually living in poverty. They are resident in the European Union and earn less than the European poverty line, and therefore find themselves in difficult financial and social circumstances.
With the Europe 2030 Strategy, various member state governments committed to reducing by 25 million people the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion compared to 2019. The 2030 Strategy is the successor to the Europe 2020 Strategy, which was supposed to lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2020, But this goal was not achieved.
And so far things are difficult. The number of EU citizens at risk of poverty and social exclusion is no longer rising, but the real decline has not yet begun. Since 2019, the proportion of the population at risk of poverty or social exclusion has increased in 9 Member States.
The increase was largest in Germany, at about 4 percentage points, followed by Spain (1.6 percentage points), Portugal (1.3 percentage points), and Luxembourg (1 percentage point). The risk of poverty is highest in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Spain, while it is lowest in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Poland.
