By IPS Correspondents
BRUSSELS, Feb 18 2004 (IPS)

The EU needs to make a renewed commitment to fight poverty and social exclusion within Europe, says a report by a leading social rights group.

The European Union (EU) must step up efforts under the Lisbon strategy agreed by leaders in 2000 to improve resources and investment in the poorer regions of Europe, says the report by Caritas Europa. The group is the European wing of Caritas Internationalis, a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service organisations.

Its report ‘Poverty has faces in Europe: the need for family-oriented policies’ launched at the European Parliament in Brussels this week highlights the plight of the poorest families in 42 countries in Europe.

“The Lisbon strategy should be given higher priority and greater visibility,” the report says. “Citizens should be made fully aware of this strategy, and actively encouraged to participate in its realisation.”

The report based on the daily work and experiences of Caritas Europa member agencies warns that the situation will deteriorate after 10 new, and poorer, countries join the EU in May. The countries are Cyprus, Malta, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The report examines key policies that affect the poorest families, such as taxation, welfare transfers, family benefits, employment, housing, education, and health.

“In so doing, it recognises that poverty is a multi-dimensional, multi-faceted phenomenon which is based not solely on income but which includes basic needs, basic human rights and such intangibles as vulnerability, risk, inequality, marginalisation, discrimination, exclusion, feelings of powerlessness, the circumscribing of options and choices,” says British scholar Arturo Alvarez Rosete, co-author of the report.

The report shows variations in a human development index across Europe which places Norway as the first in the world followed by Iceland and Sweden. On the other hand Europe includes Albania (ranked 95), Turkey (96) and Moldova (108).

Lone parents, especially single mothers, emerge as one of the greatest concerns. “It is urgent to address the situation of lone parents,” the report says. “There is a need to ameliorate both the quantity and quality of childcare facilities. Care, however, should be taken that the improvement of childcare is not simply used by governments as a coercive measure to force parents into low paid, dead-end jobs.”

Caritas is calling for a European year on lone parents to raise awareness of their difficult situation and to initiate programmes to improve their living standards.

The report finds that with some notable exceptions such as France and Germany, there is a distinct lack of family policies and consequently a shortage of studies focusing on such policies.

“The family is the primary building block for society,” the report says. “It is the family which provides for the basic care of children, the sick, the disabled, the elderly. It is the family which first develops coping mechanisms in the face of unemployment, poverty and social exclusion.”

But governments do not acknowledge this, the report says. The focus is mostly on the individual, not the family.

The report points to difficulties also among families with members who are chronically sick, disabled, mentally ill, or addicted to drugs or alcohol. Returning displaced people or refugees following the resolution of a conflict situation face particularly acute difficulties, the report says.

The Caritas report makes specific recommendations to governments and to the EU.

It asks for improved social analysis based on accurate and up-to-date information in order to have a clearer picture of the current situation in Europe. “Governments throughout Europe should involve civil society in policy formulation, thus promoting greater participatory democracy and transparency,” it says.

Caritas says the EU’s regional fund for local development initiatives should be made available for investment in people in the poorer regions of Europe.

It asks for greater articulation between regional structural funds, the EU’s main instruments for supporting social and economic restructuring, and the European social fund, which finances the EU’s employment policy aims.

“More attention needs to be paid to social policy,” says Theodor Bouwman, member of the European Parliament and chairman of the committee on social affairs and employment. “In order to prevent competition between member states from undermining national social security systems, we need a level playing field in social affairs as well as in economics.”

Economic growth is not enough to make Europe a happier or a cleaner place, said Bouwman. “On occasion we will have to resist market forces to allow human factors to play a role as well.”

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