EU’s Anti-Poverty Strategy Announced: Now the Push for National Implementation
The Commission has put social inclusion back at the centre of the European agenda, but the real test will be whether Member States can turn a broader strategy into effective national policies. A commentary by Pietro Galeone, and Sylvie Goulard
The European Commission’s new Anti-Poverty Strategy, announced last week, marks one of the clearest attempts in recent years to place social inclusion back at the center of the European project.
Despite decades of integration and economic convergence, poverty and social exclusion continue to affect a large share of Europeans.
According to the latest EU indicators, around one in five people in the Union remains at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
The burden is unevenly distributed across countries, regions and social groups, but common patterns are evident everywhere: child poverty remains stubbornly high, in-work poverty has increased in several Member States, housing costs are becoming unsustainable for low-income households, and vulnerable groups – including migrants, single-parent families, people with disabilities and young adults – continue to face major barriers to social and economic participation.
The cost-of-living crisis following the pandemic and the energy shock (past and ongoing) exposed these vulnerabilities even more clearly. Inflation disproportionately affects poorer households, while rising housing and utility costs reduce the effectiveness of existing income-support systems.
At the same time, labor-market participation alone has not been sufficient to guarantee protection from poverty. The growth of low-paid and precarious employment has weakened the traditional assumption that work automatically ensures social inclusion.
Against this background, the Commission’s Anti-Poverty Strategy represents an important signal coming from the highest EU institution.
The Strategy attempts to provide a more coherent framework connecting social protection, employment policies, access to essential services and territorial cohesion.
Rather than focusing exclusively on income transfers, the Commission adopts a multidimensional understanding of poverty that includes housing, education, healthcare, childcare, digital access and energy affordability.
The Strategy places particular emphasis on child poverty, social investment and preventive policies. It strengthens the connection with existing initiatives such as the European Child Guarantee, the European Pillar of Social Rights and the minimum income framework adopted in recent years.
It also stresses the importance of monitoring mechanisms, comparable indicators and stronger coordination between EU institutions and national governments.
Several lines of action stand out. First, the Strategy reinforces the role of minimum wages, minimum-income schemes and access to social protection. While social systems remain national competences, the Commission is clearly encouraging Member States to improve coverage, adequacy and take-up of benefits.
The Strategy links poverty reduction to labor-market quality rather than simply employment quantity. This is particularly relevant in a context where in-work poverty has become a major issue across Europe. Better wages, more stable contracts and stronger access to training are treated as anti-poverty tools, not merely labor-market instruments.
The Strategy also gives substantial importance to essential services, especially housing, childcare and healthcare, highlighting that poverty cannot be addressed through cash transfers alone. Big emphasis is also given to data collection, monitoring, and governance. The objective is not only to define targets, but also to create mechanisms through which implementation gaps can be identified earlier.
Overall, the Commission deserves credit for putting poverty reduction back at the center of the European agenda. In recent years, EU policymaking has often been dominated by emergency management and geopolitical concerns. Reintroducing social inclusion as a strategic priority matters politically as well as economically.
The Commission also deserves recognition for adopting a broader and more realistic conception of poverty. Poverty is not simply a residual problem affecting marginal groups. It interacts with labour markets, housing systems, educational inequalities, and territorial disparities. A serious anti-poverty strategy therefore requires coordination across multiple policy domains.
This broader perspective was also at the center of IEP@BU’s work in the past year leading up to the event “The EU’s Anti-Poverty Strategy: Evaluation and Next Steps,” held jointly with the European Commission. The event stressed several priorities that are reflected in the Commission’s proposal.
IEP’s findings highlighted the importance of moving beyond purely reactive welfare interventions and focusing instead on structural inclusion and prevention of poverty. Key recommendations include better coordination between social policies and labor-market institutions, stronger investment in children and education, improved access to affordable housing and more robust monitoring systems capable of evaluating actual implementation.
Event participants also underlined that poverty should be understood as multidimensional and cumulative. Economic deprivation is often associated with weak access to public services, unstable employment, educational disadvantage and territorial exclusion. From this perspective, the Commission’s attempt to integrate different policy dimensions within a single strategic framework is an important step forward.
Now, the main challenge shifts to the national level: anti-poverty policy in Europe is still largely a state-level competence.
The European Commission can provide coordination, recommendations, benchmarks and funding incentives, but implementation ultimately depends on Member States. National governments determine the generosity of minimum-income schemes, the structure of labor-market protections, housing policies, education systems, and access to healthcare.
As a result, a coordinated effort is required to avoid that ambitious European objectives remain politically symbolic while implementation remains fragmented and uneven.
Civil society organizations, researchers, trade unions, social partners, and EU institutions will need to monitor implementation carefully and continuously. The European Semester and the broader EU governance framework can help create accountability, but monitoring alone will not be sufficient.
Poverty reduction requires at all levels of relevant policymaking long-term political commitment and stable investment, both of which might become increasingly difficult to sustain in periods of fiscal consolidation or political instability.
This is where it becomes a broader political issue. The credibility of the European social model increasingly depends on whether the Union can demonstrate that economic integration and social protection are mutually reinforcing rather than contradictory. Persistent poverty and rising insecurity weaken trust in both national governments and European institutions.
The Commission’s new Strategy therefore matters not only for social policy, but also for the political legitimacy of the European project itself.
The announcement of the Anti-Poverty Strategy should thus be welcomed as an important and necessary development.
The Commission has correctly identified poverty reduction as a central European challenge and has proposed a framework that is broader, more coherent and more ambitious than many previous initiatives.
But the most important part starts now.
IEP@BU does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors. Any errors or omissions are the responsibility of the authors.
