Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-03-09-Speech-2-386"
| Predicate | Value (sorted: default) |
|---|---|
| rdf:type | |
| dcterms:Date | |
| dcterms:Is Part Of | |
| dcterms:Language | |
| lpv:document identification number |
"en.20100309.24.2-386"2
|
| lpv:hasSubsequent | |
| lpv:speaker | |
| lpv:spoken text |
"I very much share the concerns expressed in this question about the welfare and well-being of Europeans, the questions on employment and social protection and fighting poverty.
As you know, 2010 is the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion, in order to raise awareness about social problems. Hopefully this year will be good not only for discussing poverty, but also for committing ourselves to fighting it and to renewing this political commitment at EU level and among the Member States.
In order to provide an opportunity for this renewed commitment, the European Commission has included in the new EU 2020 strategy a headline target on poverty reduction, which is a reflection of our concern and the lessons learned over the past decades. The objective now is to reduce poverty by a quarter by 2020.
Fighting poverty requires prosperity, high-quality jobs for those who can work and sustain themselves, and solidarity towards those in need. These elements are all present in the EU 2020 strategy. Achieving the headline target on poverty will be supported by a dedicated flagship initiative which is called the European Platform Against Poverty. There are concrete instruments for maintaining and creating jobs at European level through the European Social Fund, the European Globalisation Fund and also the recent micro-credit initiative.
The actions taken by individual Member States are especially important. Still more needs to be done to ensure that high quality jobs are accessible to all to start with, but poverty reduction has to go well beyond questions of employment. As is recognised in the EU 2020 Communication, effective well designed social protection is indispensable for preventing and tackling poverty and exclusion.
The Member States are responsible for the financing and organisation of social protection systems, with the Commission supporting them in this task. As a key partner in the social open method of coordination, the Commission helps to identify and promote clear policy priorities, provides a monitoring framework and facilitates mutual learning. A good example so far includes the active inclusion framework, the benchmarking exercise on child poverty and the monitoring of the social impact of the crisis.
We will work very closely with the two presidencies this year: the Spanish Presidency and the Belgian Presidency. Both have important initiatives: the first stage of the Roma Summit, which was discussed a few minutes ago in this House and has a very strong impact on poverty reduction, while with the Belgian Presidency, we are preparing an initiative on reducing child poverty.
But it is not only governments we have to work with, but also NGOs. Without the NGOs, we cannot make completely successful programmes. We support NGOs dealing with poverty and social protection in general from the Progress Fund.
These are the main issues and they cover various directions where the Commission acts to reduce poverty."@en1
|
| lpv:unclassifiedMetadata | |
| lpv:videoURI |
Named graphs describing this resource:
The resource appears as object in 2 triples