Across the European Union, in 2024, 93.3 million people – 21.0% of the population – faced the same nightmare: poverty, severe material and social deprivation or living in households with minimal work activity. These are people living in homes where hope is fading, as at least one of these three plagues haunts them. Despite a small decrease of 0.3% compared to 2023 (21.3%, 94.6 million), the threat remains, like a shadow that does not recede.
While some countries seem to be holding onto the light of prosperity, others are sinking deeper. The Czech Republic (11.3%), Slovenia (14.4%), the Netherlands (15.4%), Poland (16.0%) and Ireland (16.7%) record the lowest rates, like islands of stability in an ocean of insecurity. In contrast, Germany, with 17.6 million citizens on the brink of poverty, France and Italy, with 13.5 million each, bear the brunt of the absolute numbers, revealing that even strong economies are not invulnerable.
Greece stands in fourth place in an ominous European ranking, behind Turkey (30.4%) and the Balkan EU members Bulgaria (30.3%) and Romania (27.9%). Like ghosts following, Spain and Lithuania (25.8% each) lurk right behind it, in a list that captures the relentless spread of destitution.
An invisible enemy
Poverty and social exclusion are not just statistics. They are households fading into darkness, families counting every euro, people cut off from society as if they never existed. Greece, with 26.9% of its population at risk, stands at a crossroads: will it manage to escape this trap or will it sink even deeper into the vortex of inequality?
One in four Greeks (26.9%) lives under the threat of poverty or social exclusion. In total, 2.74 million souls in Greece found themselves struggling to survive last year, trapped in a landscape of economic and social uncertainty.
