[Published: Tuesday May 26 2026]
 ‘We are barely making it’: EU poverty strategy falling short of target
By Nikolaj Nielsen
BRUSSELS, 26 May. - (ANA) - The European Commission says it has a strategy to eradicate poverty in the EU by 2050.
But it also concedes that even getting 15 million people out of deprivation over the next four years appears far-fetched.
“We are barely making it,” said Roxana Mînzatu, the EU commissioner for social rights and skills.
Speaking to MEPs on Wednesday (20 May) at the plenary in Strasbourg, Mînzatu said that only 3.7 million Europeans have been taken out of poverty. The total estimated number is 92 million.
Mînzatu is banking that her plan, proposed earlier this month, will reduce those numbers to near zero by 2050.
It includes ideas to break a generational transmission of poverty through a so-called European Child Guarantee, creating quality jobs, tackling in-work poverty and offering services to people struggling to get by.
But whether EU states will actually implement the plans remains unknown.
Anti-poverty ‘tsar’ in each capital?
Mînzatu is proposing member states appoint a national anti-poverty coordinator positioned within the highest echelons of government, such as in the office of the prime minister or president.
Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, an Irish MEP with Socialists and Democrats (S&D), welcomed the plan. But he also faulted the commission for bending to the will of corporate interests. - (ANA) -
AB/ANA/26 May 2026 - - -
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