DEVELOPMENT-PORTUGAL: The Hungry Side of the EU

By Mario de Queiroz Reprint | | Print |

Mario de Queiroz

LISBON, Mar 25 2004 (IPS) - Nearly two decades as a member of the European Union "club of the rich" have translated into little or nothing for the two million Portuguese people living in poverty.

Twenty percent of the 10.2 million people in Portugal remain in precarious economic and social conditions and 200,000 of that total live in hunger, a unique situation for the bloc that the country joined in 1986, when it was still known as the European Economic Community.

These poverty and hunger figures are born out by several studies and expert estimates.

In 1985, sociologist Alfredo Bruto da Costa headed a team from the Centre for Social Intervention Studies (CESIS), which tallied two million people living in poverty in Portugal that year, "75 percent of whom had been poor their entire lives."

Two decades after entering the EU, widespread poverty persists.

"I have the suspicion that in most cases, it is long-term poverty," said Bruto da Costa, who bases his assessment on figures on the incomes of the least favoured strata of society, the amount of food assistance being provided by charities, and the great disparity between rich and poor.

It turns out that neither the EU nor Portugal keep statistics on the proportion of people who suffer hunger in the bloc, which also includes Austria, Belgium, Britain, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.

The socioeconomic panorama of the EU will change quite dramatically as of May 1, when 10 new members join the bloc: Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia

As it stands today, however, the income gap with in the EU is such that, on average, the highest salaries are 10 times greater than the lowest. Meanwhile, Portugal has both the highest and lowest wages in the bloc.

An executive of a public enterprise in Portugal might have a monthly salary that is 27 times that of an entry-level worker.

According to official figures, admission into the EU meant an increase in Portugal’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) from 5,000 dollars per capita in 1985 to today’s 13,500 dollars per capita.

The problem, according to various studies, has been the increased concentration of wealth in the metropolitan areas of Lisbon and the northern city of Oporto.

This dynamic also has been felt in the rest of the cities along the Atlantic coast, aggravating a trend of greater development of the seaboard, to the detriment of the inland regions, according to a study by the University of Minho.

"In Portugal we have spent the EU’s money on astronomical salaries for administrators of public entities, on their cars, vacation homes, discotheques, trips to tourist paradises abroad and other superfluous luxuries, relegating the country’s development to the second tier," economist and professor René Afonso told IPS.

"Portugal reached the end of the 20th century with greater cohesion amongst the social indicators for education, life expectancy, and other aspects like access to potable water, sanitation systems and electricity – but it has not been enough to alter the concentration of wealth," according to the university study.

Parliamentary Deputy Elisa Ferreira, of the opposition Socialist Party, said that in Portugal’s development over the past few years, "one can see some symptoms similar to those of Latin America."

The salary of a management executive in a state-run or mixed entity in Portugal can be as much as three times more than for the same post in Italy, Spain or France, while the national minimum wage – 356 euros – is just 60 percent of the minimum wage in Greece, which is ranked second-to-last for development among the 15 EU countries

"In other words, in the rest of the EU such cases of misery are unknown – except in some pockets in Greece or in southern Spain and Italy -, simply because the GDP is much better distributed than it is in Portugal, a European country with a social fabric in the Latin American style," economist Alberto García said in an IPS interview.

In a 1995 study titled "Poverty in Portugal in the 1980s", economics professor Leonor Vasconcelos Ferreira, of the University of Oporto, maintained that poverty cannot be assessed in merely relative terms, but must be studied "in relation to the minimum level of resources that permit access to consumption."

This is how the two million Portuguese could be characterised as poor, "due to their living conditions, which are quite precarious," and their number has remained "practically constant since the first study of the issue" in 1985, said Vasconcelos Ferreira in statements published in O Público, a Lisbon newspaper.

Around half of the two million poor, including the 200,000 who experience hunger daily, "are vulnerable to a situation of extreme poverty, which means that there are a million people who could suffer severe nutritional deficiencies," she added.

Sociologist Luis Capucha, researcher at a Lisbon university, estimates that 35 to 40 percent of Portuguese families spend "less on food than is considered necessary to satisfy their basic nutritional needs."

Capucha recognises that hunger in Portugal cannot be compared to the levels of hunger and starvation that occurs in Africa, but adds that "the only hot meal for thousands of Portuguese children is what they eat at school."

This fact gives reason to suspect that the estimates of how many Portuguese are going hungry could be conservative.

There are 200,000 people receiving the aid provided by the Food Bank Against Hunger (BACF), and by other charity institutions, including the Catholic Church.

But, says BACF president Isabel Jonet, "There are many people who do not say they are going hungry because there is a feeling of shame about being poor."

The government of conservative Prime Minister José Manuel Durão Barroso does not deny these disturbing denunciations of poverty and hunger, but assures that progress is being made to resolve the problem of social exclusion.

The poverty rate of 23 percent in 1995 will fall to 17 percent in 2005, says the government.

But the aid organisations see a situation that is growing worse, not better.

Roman Catholic priest Agostinho Jardim Gonçalves, president of the Portuguese division of the European Anti-Poverty Network, does not mince words in his opinion of the governing conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD) and nationalist CDS/PP.

"This government, especially the CDS/PP, attacks the poor in a generalised way, calling them lazy, and that is dishonest," Jardim Gonçalves told IPS.

The priest accused many "arrogant politicians" of "treating people like simple screws in the machine, because they see that people are no longer the reason of existence for society, because what they’re interested in is profit."

"What is the priority: to serve the citizenry or to serve the economy?" asks Jardim Gonçalves. The only solution is social insertion, because "as long as the poor are excluded they cannot participate in resolving their own problems, and there will be no consistent solutions," he said.

The strongest expression of exclusion is hunger, says sociologist Bruto da Costa. "It is an overall limitation on the human being, and whoever is that poor loses social citizenship, and ultimately also loses political citizenship."