According to the last Eurostat statistics, in 2024, at least 93.3 million people in the EU were living at risk of poverty or social exclusion. We are talking about 21% of the EU population, 1 in every 5 people. Comparing to the 94.6 million people in 2023, this represents a decrease of approximately of 1.3%. Europe remains far from meeting the 2030 targets for poverty reduction of 15 million people , as well as the UN Sustainable Development Goals to eradicate all forms of poverty. This insignificant progress shows that EU measures are delivering poor results to end poverty. At this pace, how can we possibly do it?
Moreover, the new figures are just the tree hiding the forest, the multidimensional nature of poverty and the daily struggles of millions across the EU. We can’t celebrate a small decrease of 0.4 percentage points of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion when what we see is more people living on the streets, longer lines for food and growing need for social aid.
5.6 million people accumulate hardships as they live simultaneously at or below the poverty threshold and in low-work inensity household and suffer from severe material deprivation. These people often go unseen in headline statistics.
Women and young adults face some of the highest poverty rates in the EU, 21.9% for women versus 20.0% for men, and 26.2% for those aged 18 to 24. These figures reflect how systemic inequalities affect people at key life stages: women often carry unpaid care burdens, while young people struggle to access stable jobs and housing. Research shows that often when mothers face persistent barriers to escaping poverty, their children are at higher risk throughout life, making intergenerational poverty a systemic outcome, not just an accident. Poverty is still poorly monitored! If statistics were a mirror, they would only reflect part of reality. But they also fail to reflect the lived realities of poverty.
As one person experiencing poverty in Croatia shared in the 2024 EAPN Poverty Watch Report:
“Even though I worked for 43 years, non-stop, with a couple of sick days throughout my life, I now depend on the kindness of my children to lend me money until my pension comes—does that make any sense? My wife has been working for two more years, so fortunately we live on her salary, and I didn’t have any debts before. I handed in all the papers on time, more than a year ago, and every time they miss something, some paper that I must manually chase around the city, even though they say they are networked and that they are great with these new IT technologies. I also borrowed a little from friends so that after I get my pension, I will pay back my debts in the next couple of months, but it’s good to have friends you can rely on in a crisis, along with family of course. And this is all happening because of the slowness of the state administration, and I don’t know how to hurry them up. I wrote to everyone, sent urgent letters, and everywhere I got the same answer - wait a minute, you’re not the only one with similar answers."
We are especially concerned about the years ahead, as the EU and Member States still underinvestment in the welfare state. The 2024 Poverty Watch already points to a dangerous trend of public disinvestment in essential services and social protection. The EU must act to protect the welfare state and prioritise social spending. The stagnation of the Gini Index, measuring inequality, also raises alarm. Current policies are failing to redistribute wealth or lift people out of poverty.
Current efforts fall far short. We urgently need a comprehensive EU Anti-Poverty Strategy grounded in human rights, responsive to the complexity of poverty, that goes beyond the notion of material deprivation, leaving no one out of the diagnostic, backed by adequate financial resources. It’s urgent that the EU make a political choice to end poverty.
