Speech president Schulz for the 4th Annual Convention of the European Platform Against Poverty and Social Exclusion

Dear Commissioner Thyssen,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today we are discussing some very serious topics but also commemorating a milestone in our ability to face up to protecting vulnerable groups: the 25th Anniversary of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child.

The adoption of the Convention and its rapid ratification were major steps forward for bettering children's rights. It has led to countless initiatives and tangible results the world over.

Much remains to be accomplished however - children all over the world, including in the EU, face poverty on a daily basis and their rights are not respected.

More broadly, poverty and social exclusion are proving to be extremely challenging.

Through the Europe 2020 strategy, the EU countries engaged to lift at least 20 million people out of poverty and social exclusion by the end of the decade.

Today, as we head towards the half-way mark of this strategy, poverty rates remain unchanged and 25% of EU citizens are at risk of falling into poverty.

This is the damning reality that the crisis has left us with.

This is the reality we need to urgently tackle head on, all together: at national level, where much competence for these matters lies, but also at European level.

The scale of the problem means that we need to act on all fronts and at all levels. We cannot afford to leave any stone unturned.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Today I would like to share with you some of my views on what actions can be envisaged at the European level both to dampen the immediate effects of poverty and social exclusion, and also to sustainably reduce it in the medium term.

First of all the immediate.

At a time when finances are stretched, I urge all member states to make full use of the European Social Fund. I also urge them to ensure that the newly created Fund for European Aid to the most Deprived is well tapped.

With a few weeks before winter I want to also highlight the Food Distribution Scheme for the most deprived.

It was shocking that some member states had wanted to end this programme considering that there are an increasing number of people in need of it.

I am glad that the European Parliament's view prevailed and we still have this means of delivering essentials to the hardest hit.

We also need to immediately address the youth unemployment rate. It is unpardonable that nearly 25% of our best trained, fittest, and most enterprising people are not able to put their skills and energies to good use. Instead they face poverty and uncertainty as their future.

I am concerned that member states have failed to use all of the EU funds available this year through the Youth Employment Initiative. This is money which the EU is making available to support national youth employment guarantee schemes.

When we met with Heads of States and Governments for the Employment Summit in Milan some weeks ago, I urged Member States to make full use of the available funds from now on, and not to delay any further.

The under use of this fund is worrying because it signals that member states are not necessarily prioritising getting young people into work as much as they should.

Poverty, and most notably social exclusion, are also about discrimination. On this I urge the Council to urgently adopt the directive on implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons and ask the Commission to close gaps in the existing anti-discrimination legislation.

As for objectives for the next few years, our goals need to be ambitious.

People and their basic needs must feature at the forefront of the public policy agenda.

Over these last years we have seen all EU countries do their utmost to preserve their credit rating.

I now want to see them committing to policies which will give them a AAA social rating, as suggested by President Jean-Claude Juncker in the European Parliament's plenary when the Commission was elected in October.

Taxes and austerity were heaped on normal people very quickly. This exacerbated the precarious situation of many and pushed others into a life of poverty until then unknown to them.

On the contrary, it is proving extremely difficult to introduce fairer burden sharing of the effects of the crisis.

Modest initiatives such as what is going to be left of the financial transaction tax, are struggling to get off the ground while.

At the same time, as we have seen so spectacularly recently, huge multinationals continue playing each member state against the other in a race to the corporate tax bottom.

Each year it is estimated that in the EU around 1 trillion euros is lost to tax evasion, avoidance and fraud. This is a colossal amount of money which is not directed to helping the less fortunate and into investments which will yield jobs and education.

With vast sums of money like this at stake, addressing poverty and social exclusion while failing to correct the flaws of our taxation policies is similar to arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

The European Parliament will want to see a very strong priority given to taxation policy by the Juncker Commission. We need to have concrete initiatives and we need them on the table now.

The European Parliament welcomed the announcement of the proposal on automatic exchange of information regarding tax-rulings, as we believe that increased transparency can only lead to better and fairer practices.

On the fiscal and budgetary side we must also now begin to make some proper room for social concerns.

We must never lose sight of our goal of improving the health of our budgets.

Our welfare systems, our investments and our economic growth will only be guaranteed in the long term through fiscally sound budgets.

At the same time we urgently need to complement this with another approach. We need investment policies and we need to keep mechanisms in place to help those suffering as a result of the necessary but painful structural reforms.

Structural reforms and sound fiscal positions will help alleviate poverty in the longer term. But poverty is roaring on our doorstep at this very moment and this needs to be better factored into our economic governance system.

First of all, the Commission needs to give more prominence to social concerns when developing its Country Specific Recommendations.

A tangible improvement would be for the Commission to develop recommendations with the aim of meeting the poverty reduction target of the Europe 2020 strategy.

I would make the same recommendation to governments when submitting their national reform programmes to the EU.

Secondly, the economic governance system needs to be urgently complemented by a more social dimension.

An example would be the scoreboard proposed by the Commission on key employment and social indicators to complement the already existing Macroeconomic Imbalances scoreboard.

A second example is to ensure that budgetary discipline does not jeopardise the provision or affordability of healthcare, a key area where the poor often lose out considerably.

On the income front, here too some important improvements can be made through the EU level. A decent income is often the main door out of poverty and exclusion for an individual.

Firstly, minimum income schemes should be established in all Member States. This will provide a shield against poverty and allow people to live in dignity.

Secondly, minimum wage levels should be set up in each country because work alone, if not compensated fairly, is sometimes not sufficient to lift people out of poverty. Currently 9% of people in the EU who are in work are poor. This is grossly unfair and does not even make any economic sense.

President Juncker declared in the European Parliament that he would work towards introducing a minimum wage in each country. We will take him to task on this.

Ladies and gentlemen,

There is a generation in the drama of this crisis which I would like to particularly single out. Over the next few years the reality is stark and simple: we will take the decisions which will either save or sink them.

I am of course talking about the generation of our children and young adults.

The best trained generation Europe has ever produced. A generation which has no blame at all for the crisis, and a generation which should not be inheriting our debts.

This is not a generation which deserves widespread poverty and deflated aspirations.

This year we are commemorating the bloodiest war in Europe and those who sacrificed their lives for other generations. We commemorate to say "never again". We cannot sacrifice another generation on the altar of an economic crisis.

If a battle cry is needed for us to get our act together and begin delivering convincingly for citizens and their needs, then it must be this generation.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Finally, I want to leave you with some food for thought.

When we set out to fight poverty and social exclusion, be it through an individual's actions or through NGOs or public policy, we do this to a large extent out of a sense of altruism and belief in the principle of fairness.

There is then also the economic rationale: the less people in poverty, the more there are to make material contributions to our societies.

But what many tend to forget is that poverty and social exclusion, being the direct result of inequality, undermine the very fundamentals of our society. As history has already shown us, this threatens the existence of our democratic system.

Losing democracy is an extremely high price to pay for everyone. For the sake of our democracy, the European Union and all Member States must live up to their responsibilities right now.