International

At least 6500 people took part yesterday in the demonstration in Den Bosch, where we drew the government’s attention to the fact that poverty exists in the Netherlands and that the fight against it should be taking priority. The government of Mark Rutte must be taken on, and the other European heads of government too show time and again that they don’t find combatting poverty all that important. They are fixated exclusively on getting rid of their budget deficits. What that means for people who already have things tough doesn’t seem to interest them. It’s high time that we subjected all of the proposals with which these heads of government pepper one another to a poverty test.

Not long ago the European Commission published the results of an EU-wide opinion poll. The outcome of the poll was absolutely shocking. Nine out of ten people were convinced that poverty had increased in their country during the previous year. 75% believe that too little is done to combat poverty and around half see nothing positive in the EU’s policy.

These people are of course right. Current policies emerging from successive summits mean that everything is cut to destruction, and not only in countries experiencing problems. In all EU member states the slogan is that the budget deficit must be reduced, and quickly. This leads not only to further negative economic growth, but as is happening in the Netherlands in the case of youth unemployment and with social workplaces, throughout Europe it is the most vulnerable people who are hardest hit. No wonder that the Commission concluded recently that the number of people living below the poverty line will be reduced by a mere 12 million by 2020, and not by 20 million as previous estimates indicated. Given that an estimated 80 million people are currently living below the poverty line in Europe, this means that in 2020 a minimum of 68 million will be poor, a scandal for so rich a continent as Europe.

In the European Parliament I will be trying to win as much support as possible for the idea of building a poverty test into all existing rules regarding economic governance and those currently being developed. Who knows, perhaps there are enough MEPs with a social conscience who will support this initiative; because nothing is of course left of Europe as a ‘community of values’ if European policy means that more and more people do not have enough money even to eat decently.