{"id":23748,"date":"2025-04-10T22:18:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-10T19:18:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=23748"},"modified":"2025-04-10T22:18:57","modified_gmt":"2025-04-10T19:18:57","slug":"european-antipoverty-network-eapn-the-invisible-poor-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=23748","title":{"rendered":"European Antipoverty Network \u2013 EAPN: The “invisible poor” in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Data from the 19 EU countries in which the European Antipoverty Network (EAPN) operates are presented in the new report \u201cEU 2024 Poverty Watch\u201d, which has just been published (“EU 2024 POVERTY WATCH Towards a systemic approach to social protection<\/a>“).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report is based on the responses from the national networks for the past year and is complemented by conclusions and proposals for a \u201csystemic approach to social protection\u201d. According to EAPN, social protection systems should not be seen as \u201ccosts\u201d, as is the case so far in the EU, but as investments. \u201cThe fight against poverty requires much more than individual policy measures. It is a global struggle that requires structural changes in the way we approach social rights and human dignity\u201d, the report underlines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Champions of Poverty<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The European Network for Combating Poverty has been active since 1990 and brings together 33 national and 13 pan-European civil society organisations. The Network has an advisory role to the Council of Europe, seeking \u2013 among other things \u2013 to put the fight against poverty high on the EU agenda and to ensure the cooperation of the Member States in the eradication of poverty and social exclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Greece, however, is far from this goal, as more than one in four citizens (26.1% \u2013 almost 2.7 million people) are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. This is the fourth highest percentage at a pan-European level, with the first three places occupied by Romania, Bulgaria and Spain (with 32%, 30% and 27% respectively). On average in the EU, it is estimated that 21.4% of the population is at risk of poverty, corresponding to 94.6 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cinvisible\u201d poor are doubly excluded<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As highlighted in both the Greek and the pan-European report, the actual poverty rates may be even higher. The \u201cEU Poverty Observatory\u201d specifically refers to the findings of Greek researchers on how poverty is under-recorded by official statistics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cInformation from our network further highlights that, as Greece reports, national housing surveys do not include certain vulnerable groups of the population and, therefore, may not provide a full picture of the true extent of poverty.\u201d For example, ELSTAT’s living conditions surveys do not include people living in collective housing, such as hotels, boarding houses, hospitals, nursing homes, camps, reformatories, Roma camps, cars, bridges, shacks near train stations, shelters for battered women, elderly care facilities, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same is true in other European countries, as the methodology of official statistics focuses on households \u2013 defined as \u201cpeople living in dwellings and maintaining a common economy\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, the Network\u2019s report states that \u201cwe are faced with the exclusion of the extremely poor from surveys on extreme poverty and poverty in general\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poverty is \u201cfading\u201d throughout society<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another conclusion, which is highlighted primarily by the data for Greece, is that poverty no longer only concerns vulnerable groups, but affects society more broadly. Specifically, as stated in the report, 87.6% of the population in Greece faces at least some difficulty in making ends meet, compared to 45.4% of the European average. This places Greece in a worse position than Bulgaria, where 78.2% of the population faces financial difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lack of a welfare state<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost of living crisis affects some more than others. \u201cLow-income families, rural communities, the unemployed and low-wage earners feel the burden more acutely and perceive a lack of targeted support from institutions, leading to a sense of injustice and neglect. This can lead to feelings of alienation and a decrease in trust in institutions that are perceived as not responding to the plight of vulnerable groups,\u201d the report highlights. This observation comes from the corresponding Eurofound study on the crisis of trust in institutions (Trust in crisis, 2024).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically for Greece, the report notes that in recent years the number of people experiencing severe material and social deprivation who are not poor has increased significantly. Poverty in our country does not only concern the so-called \u201cvulnerable people\u201d but also affects broader social groups, such as families with children and the elderly. This is why a comprehensive review of the strategy for the eradication of poverty is becoming more urgent, the researchers state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main problems in Greece<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main problems highlighted by the research for Greece are the accuracy and inadequate housing. The second concerns both the high costs of covering housing costs \u2013 which are the highest in the EU in proportion to income, the increase in the number of people living in homelessness, the serious problems in housing immigrants and refugees, and the increase in foreclosures of primary residences. Another problem that is emerging in Greece is the lack of access to health services and the growing number of mental health problems. Indeed, according to the OECD, our country has a negative ranking in unmet medical care needs due to cost, affecting 9.4% of citizens, compared to 1% in the EU.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Health poverty” is not unrelated to the fact that Greece has the highest private health spending as a percentage of GDP (40%, with an EU average of 15%), while remaining low in public financing of the health system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Data from the 19 EU countries in which the European Antipoverty Network (EAPN) operates are presented in the new report \u201cEU 2024 Poverty Watch\u201d,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23749,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[818,390],"tags":[6794,25,6793,6795,989,3741],"class_list":["post-23748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe","category-politics","tag-eapn","tag-eu","tag-european-antipoverty-network","tag-health-poverty","tag-poverty","tag-welfare-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23748"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23751,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23748\/revisions\/23751"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}