What changed between the draft committee report and the plenary report

Added:34. Calls on the Member States to address youth poverty and socio-economic inequality, recognising that young people are disproportionately affected by unemployment, precarious employment, housing exclusion and social vulnerability; stresses that young people are overrepresented in sectors characterised by part-time, seasonal, precarious and undeclared work, and that rates of young people not in education, employment or training remain persistently high in several Member States and more than twice as high as the overall EU unemployment rate; highlights the need to strengthen the Youth Guarantee as a key instrument for promoting the inclusion of young people in the labour market, as well as the need to use the strategy to develop more synergies between this instrument and the European Child Guarantee, and to strengthen both instruments by adopting targeted measures, advancing affordable housing solutions for young people within the upcoming affordable housing plan, and enhancing tailored mental health support and social inclusion services specifically designed for young people; calls for strengthened support for young people transitioning out of alternative care, to ensure a stable and dignified path into adulthood, namely by providing enhanced access to training and employment opportunities, or support with university or vocational education and training, in order to reduce the risk of poverty, social exclusion and homelessness during this critical period;

Added:35. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to consider the hidden phenomena of poverty, to combat the stigmatisation of people living in poverty, and the non-take-up of available social benefits;

Added:36. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to revise relevant legislation in order to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on socio-economic status, recognising its intersection with other forms of discrimination; underlines that a clear legal basis is necessary to ensure enforceable rights and protection for people experiencing poverty and social exclusion; further calls on the Council to adopt its position on the horizontal anti-discrimination directive in order to launch interinstitutional negotiations;

Added:37. Calls on the Member States to review policies and measures that penalise people experiencing extreme poverty, and the sanctions against those providing support; emphasises that such measures often undermine dignity, worsen exclusion and are counterproductive to long-term social inclusion objectives;

Added:38. Urges the Member States to explore and implement proactive mechanisms to ensure that all individuals eligible for social benefits, especially those in groups targeted for social assistance, are informed effectively of and granted access to them, thereby reducing non-take-up, including by reducing the administrative burden of benefit claims, ensuring more transparency, and ensuring that staff are trained to reach out to and assist people experiencing poverty, in order to build trust in the relevant institutions;

Added:39. Regrets that the target of the EU Roma Strategic Framework 2021-2030 on reducing the poverty gap between Roma communities and the general population by at least half is still far from being reached; highlights that the EU anti-poverty strategy should share the common goal of promoting fundamental rights, reducing inequality and addressing structural discrimination with the EU Roma Strategic Framework and the European Child Guarantee; underlines the importance of ensuring that these initiatives are implemented in synergy, particularly in tackling child poverty and breaking the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage among Roma families and traveller communities;

Added:40. Stresses the growing digital divide, which can deepen poverty by limiting access to information, and the need for measures to address the digital exclusion of low-income and marginalised groups, including older people; calls, in this regard, on the Commission and the Member States to foster the digital inclusion of vulnerable groups through measures and support programmes ensuring their access to digital technologies, infrastructure and connectivity, as well as training on basic digital skills; recommends the inclusion of clear indicators to monitor digital inclusion, especially among children, while continuing to safeguard their online activity and that of teenagers;

Added:41. Considers that the target of the full digitalisation of key public services set out in the EU’s Digital Decade policy programme can accentuate inequalities, particularly between urban and rural areas, age groups and socio-economic groups, by moving away from individualised support; stresses, in this regard, the need to strike a balance between the process of digitalisation of public services and administration, and the needs of vulnerable groups; calls on the Commission and the Member States to address this issue in the context of the anti-poverty strategy and national action plans, ensuring the necessary resources, in-person support and proper training for staff in key public administration services, to ensure equal access to public services and prevent the widening of the digital divide;

Added:42. Recalls that the increasing use of algorithms and AI systems in essential public services can pose significant risks of reinforcing existing forms of discrimination, particularly against people experiencing poverty; urges the Commission, in this regard, to promote AI systems that are ethical by design and to ensure the horizontal principle of non-discrimination in all EU regulations relating to AI;

Added:43. Stresses the fact that poverty and mental health are closely intertwined and that each can negatively affect the other; recommends that the Member States strengthen support for people, including families and children in vulnerable situations, through mental health and psychosocial support services, and ensure the deployment of sufficient resources and adequately trained professionals to provide these services effectively;

Added:44. Stresses the importance of ensuring the right for everyone to access, create and participate in culture, and of eliminating economic, social and territorial discrimination in access to culture;

Added:45. Highlights that people at risk of poverty and social exclusion are disproportionately impacted by climate change; reiterates that the green and digital transitions must be socially fair and inclusive; calls for the EU anti-poverty strategy to incorporate adequate and targeted measures that reinforce and complement efforts towards a just transition, ensuring a comprehensive approach to tackling social and economic inequalities; urges the Commission to commit sufficient funding in the 2028-2034 MFF for investments in supporting people during these transitions, with particular attention to low-income households;

Added:46. Stresses that people living in rural areas, remote communities and areas with a low density of public services are more vulnerable to falling into poverty and experiencing social exclusion due to a lack of employment opportunities, public services (including education and public transport), digital connectivity, and high energy and transport prices; calls for the specific needs of people living in these areas to be considered in the anti-poverty strategy;

Added:A strategy with child poverty at its core

Added:47. Deplores the fact that the number of children at risk of poverty and social exclusion has increased; calls on the Commission to ensure that the anti-poverty strategy actively combats child poverty through a life-cycle approach, considering that the first years of children’s lives are crucial to their physical, mental, cognitive, social and emotional development, and to their lifelong fulfilment, in order to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty;

Added:48. Calls on the Commission to support the Member States in strengthening and fully implementing the European Child Guarantee without delay, to ensure access to effective and free healthcare, education, early childhood education and care, effective access to adequate and decent housing, and healthy nutrition for all children in need; underlines, in this context, the importance of effective and universal access to affordable school meals; highlights the central role of the European Child Guarantee in fighting child poverty and social exclusion, and recommends proper coordination and connection between this instrument and the anti-poverty strategy; stresses the importance of its full and timely implementation by the Member States; calls on the Commission and Member States to make available, and make full use of, all resources, including the ESF+ and the Recovery and Resilience Facility, to effectively implement the European Child Guarantee, while also ensuring increased funds to foster educational inclusion;

Added:49. Underlines the importance of after-school care and combating early school-leaving; considers that the anti-poverty strategy is an opportunity to promote the improvement in the quality of early childhood education and care services through adequate financial and human resources, training for staff, improved early warning systems, and measures for the evaluation and continuous improvement of pedagogical quality, such as literacy and numeracy, in order to ensure the overall development of children; stresses the importance of closing persistent gaps in functional literacy and numeracy, through targeted interventions in formal and informal education settings, to reduce significant barriers to overcoming poverty;

Added:50. Calls on the Commission to ensure that the European Child Guarantee has a dedicated budget of at least EUR 20 billion in the 2028-2034 MFF, implemented through the ESF+, in order to respond to the growing challenges of child poverty and social exclusion, and for the Member States to allocate at least 5 % of ESF+ funds to specific projects and structural investments combating child poverty, with at least 10 % earmarked for the Member States with child poverty and social exclusion levels exceeding the EU average; emphasises that this investment in the next generation, in addition to ensuring the well-being of children, is a sound investment that would prevent future societal costs; stresses that the use of these funds should be transparent and require the involvement of social organisations in their planning, implementation and evaluation;

Added:51. Reiterates its call on the Commission to carefully monitor the implementation of the European Child Guarantee in all of the Member States, as part of the European Semester and country-specific recommendations; considers that the country-specific recommendations should reflect Member States’ budgetary compliance with the minimum requirement of allocation for tackling child poverty set out in the ESF+ Regulation;

Added:52. Urges the Member States to ensure the provision of quality childcare accessible to all, with the aim of supporting early childhood education and care as crucial drivers in breaking the cycle of poverty and increasing parents’ participation in the labour market, recognising that caregiving responsibilities disproportionately fall on women;

Added:53. Calls on the Member States to ensure a child-focused orientation in their social protection systems and to strengthen them by providing specific benefits for children in need, to support their development and well-being, such as child allowances, school meals and cost-reduction programmes for cultural, sport, leisure and extracurricular activities;

Added:54. Stresses that children affected by poverty and social exclusion face difficulties in various areas of their development; emphasises, in this regard, the importance of a multisectoral approach, in which all relevant stakeholders work in partnership to develop an integrated strategy to identify difficulties and combat inequalities in childhood, providing child protection and family support services; highlights that some children and their families affected by poverty may need specific support, e.g. from speech therapists, ophthalmologists, psychologists, occupational therapists and nutritionists; calls for the anti-poverty strategy to actively promote partnerships between educational, healthcare and social services in order to facilitate access to care and the transfer of information between services, with a view to improving integrated support and coordination mechanisms for children in need;

Added:55. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure every child’s right to family life, meaning that poverty, precarious housing situations or lack of access to adequate public services are never used as the sole grounds for placing children in institutional care; recommends that the Member States develop national prevention strategies and proactive social policies to prevent the separation of children from their family environment; calls on the Member States to ensure that recourse to institutionalising children and young people is treated as a last resort, and to invest in safe foster care systems for children and young people to ease the transition from institutional care to family and community-based care; recommends that the Member States design and implement monitoring mechanisms to identify poverty-related family separation;

Added:56. Condemns all forms of violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect with regard to children; calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure investments in child protection systems, including tackling violence against and among children, e.g. cyber violence and bullying, especially when based on socio-economic grounds and affecting vulnerable children, in order to encourage the exchange of best practice in this area with a view to eradicating violence and harassment;

Added:Combating poverty by increasing democratic participation

Added:57. Calls on the Commission and the Member States to ensure adequate, effective and transparent mechanisms to facilitate the meaningful and continuous participation of people with lived experience of poverty in all stages of policymaking, including the design, implementation and evaluation of policies affecting people living in poverty, to go hand in hand with a methodology and capacity building that would enable such participation, resulting in co-creation and not merely consultation, in line with the principle ‘nothing about us without us’;

Added:58. Recommends that an annual conference be held to assess the implementation of the anti-poverty strategy, with a broad and diverse composition, including people with lived experience of poverty, particularly women; highlights that the conference should contribute to the EU’s formal monitoring of the anti-poverty strategy by providing space for reviewing progress against clear benchmarks and indicators; calls, in this regard, for the direct participation of people with lived experience of poverty to be actively supported and recognised as essential to evaluating the anti-poverty strategy’s actual impact;

Added:59. Recognises the importance of the various social organisations, including not-for-profits, involved in combating and preventing poverty, and the role that these organisations play in the fight against poverty, and underlines the need to meaningfully involve them and to strengthen the resources allocated to support their work;

Added:Proper institutional coordination, governance

Added:60. Underlines that the success of the anti-poverty strategy will also depend on an intersectional approach and adequate funding, as well as proper horizontal and multi-level coordination between all levels of governance and decision-making involved in its delivery; reiterates the necessity of comprehensively integrating the anti-poverty strategy into all relevant policies, to ensure consistency, impact and long-term sustainability;

61. Considers that the scope of responsibilities at EU, Member State and regional level for achieving the goal of eradicating poverty should be defined appropriately, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity;

Change 3

Changed:20.62. Calls on the Commission to introduce a horizontal principle into the Strategy focusedanti-poverty onstrategy, consideringrequiring theall impactsrelevant ofEU sectoral policies to carry out an ex ante impact assessment on poverty,poverty and inequality, including through the obligationdistributional impact assessments, with particular attention to carrythe outeffects anon exthose antemost impactat assessment;risk of experiencing social exclusion and extreme poverty;

Change 4

Removed:21. Recommends that the Strategy have a designated person responsible at European Commission level and that each Member State appoint a national coordinator and draw up a national action plan, involving local and regional authorities and organisations involved in combating and preventing poverty in its implementation;

Added:63. Emphasises the need for the EU to continue focusing on the fight against homelessness, extreme poverty and social exclusion, through adequate financial support, promoting mutual learning of Member States’ strategies and experiences, and establishing a systematic approach to monitoring progress and the efficiency of the measures taken;

Removed:22. Calls for the strengthening of the next multiannual financial framework (MFF) and better use of the ESF+, the ERDF, the FEAD and the AMIF in order to reinforce policies that contribute to eradicating poverty;

Added:64. Recommends that the anti-poverty strategy have a designated person responsible at European Commission level; calls on each Member State to appoint a national coordinator and implement the anti-poverty strategy through a national action plan, with the involvement of those with lived experience of poverty, the local and regional authorities, social partners and civil society organisations involved in combating and preventing poverty in its implementation;

Removed:23. Reiterates the need to urgently increase the funding of the European Child Guarantee with a dedicated budget of at least EUR 20 billion; insists that this dedicated budget should be part of the next MFF, covered by the ESF+.

Added:65. Calls for a designated Commission task force on poverty eradication, with the aim of monitoring the implementation and coordination of the anti-poverty strategy, as well as the integration of its objectives into other EU policies;

Added:66. Recalls that the at-risk-of-poverty-or-social-exclusion (AROPE) indicator fails to encompass the root causes of poverty, notably by omitting persons living outside of private households, qualitative aspects of poverty and lived experiences of marginalisation; underlines that poverty extends beyond insufficient income or material deprivation; calls on the Social Protection Committee to work with relevant stakeholders on renewing the measuring of AROPE statistics in order to expand it towards a stronger, disaggregated and more multidimensional vision of poverty and social exclusion;

Added:67. Stresses that the anti-poverty strategy will only deliver results if accompanied by adequate funding at EU and national level; insists on the need to safeguard and strengthen cohesion policy in order to continue supporting economic, social and territorial cohesion and combating asymmetries between and within the Member States of the EU under the next MFF; calls, in this regard, for an adequate and ring-fenced allocation of funds to reinforce policies that contribute to eradicating poverty, including targeted support for marginalised and vulnerable groups; highlights the essential role of the ESF+ in promoting social inclusion and combating poverty, notably by providing aid to the most deprived and the European Child Guarantee, as well as the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Asylum Migration and Integration Fund in this context; stresses the importance of optimising the use of EU funds, including the Recovery and Resilience Facility, to finance concrete anti-poverty measures such as affordable and energy-efficient housing, access to quality early childhood education and care, accessible public transport and targeted energy support for low-income households;

Added:68. Recalls the thematic enabling conditions applicable to the ERDF, the ESF+ and the Cohesion Fund set out in Annex IV to Regulation (EU) 2021/1060 of the European Parliament laying down common provisions for these funds, in particular enabling condition 4.4., entitled ‘National strategic policy framework for social inclusion and poverty reduction’; stresses the importance of linking the anti-poverty strategy and its funding to the previously defined specific objectives; calls on the Commission and the Council to ensure that the common provisions of the ERDF and the ESF+ better reflect these specific objectives, and to incorporate the anti-poverty strategy into the next MFF, as well as gender mainstreaming;

Added:69. Recalls that energy and transport, among other elements, are key essential services to which everyone should have access, and therefore insists that extra attention be paid to the social climate plans that Member States are required to design and implement under the Social Climate Fund, investing in energy efficiency, housing renovation, and the accessibility and affordability of renewable energy sources and transport systems; calls on the Member States to actively involve people in vulnerable situations, so that the support can effectively reach those who need it the most; calls on the Member States to exchange best practices in the fight against energy poverty, such as energy vouchers and energy price regulation;

Added:70. Stresses that EU funds are difficult to access at local level and for organisations with fewer technical resources due to their complexity; underscores the need to simplify the implementation of EU funding mechanisms and the arrangements for providing final beneficiaries with these funds, and to train staff at the relevant public authorities and at the organisations; underlines that according to the ESF+ Regulation, the co-financing rate for support to the most deprived persons must be continued, to stay at or similar to 90 %, which should facilitate access to this financing for programmes and activities designed to help eradicate poverty;

Added:71. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council and the Commission.