On Wednesday, April 24, the Commission disbursed the 2nd installment of the emergency bridge financing to Ukraine, amounting to 1.5 billion euros. At the same time, the EU suffered a defeat on an internal invisible “front”.
Since the start of the war, the EU has provided almost $93.3 billion in economic, military, humanitarian and refugee aid to Ukraine.
On February 1, 2024, the Europeans agreed to commit up to €50 billion to a new Facility for Ukraine as part of its accession process until 2027.
Thus, Ukraine will have received the mammoth sum of 143 billion euros in total.
So while the EU is financing a war – 33 billion euros is military aid – 1 in 4 Europeans live in poverty, while the bloc is unable to even manage the homeless.
In particular, out of 450 million, 95 million inhabitants live in poverty. It is recalled that Greece has one of the highest poverty rates at 26%.
While the blog is cooking up plans for the development of a defense industry and a Euro army, all attempts to reduce homelessness and poverty seem to have remained empty words.
The Commission’s Europe 2020 strategy, drawn up in 2010, aimed to lift 20 million people out of poverty by 2020. But that target was never met, experts say.
Thus, in 2020 came the Action Plan of the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), setting the goal of reducing poverty to at least 15 million inhabitants by 2030.
This specific plan is not going to succeed either, as journalist Kate Holman notes in Social Europe.
“Homelessness has become a pan-European problem, with around 895,000 people sleeping rough or in a shelter every night in Europe, a population equivalent to that of a city like Marseille, Amsterdam or Turin!” experts note.
In 2021, the Lisbon Declaration aimed to end homelessness in Europe by 2030.
“However, despite progress in a minority of member states (e.g. Finland), this goal also looks like a chimera—although according to Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights housing is recognized as a human right” as he observes Holman.
Until now the perception of who might be homeless was limited to the image of an elderly person, perhaps an alcoholic. However, there is now a new group of homeless people with mental health problems, living together temporarily in a small-scale housing project where they are responsible for managing their daily lives.
Often there are barriers to people joining structures which leads them to the streets. Rules and regulations often exclude couples, children, pets, undocumented immigrants, and users of alcohol and other drugs.
“Some of these restrictive measures may be understandable, to protect other residents, but there are other deterrents: the risk of violence, theft, noise, lack of privacy and personal tensions. “Structures should be welcoming spaces that not only provide a bed for the night but promote recovery,” says Holman.
Speaking in parliament, the chairman of the European Platform on Combatting Homelessness (EPOCH), former Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme, called for a comprehensive EU action plan to combat homelessness, with funding over a number of years.
However, with the EU’s new fiscal rules putting limits on member states’ public spending, this seems utopian.
NGOs and unions criticized the fiscal framework, characterizing it as a return to austerity. According to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), only three member states will be able to achieve their social and environmental targets.
Yet the EU is pouring funds into more weapons and war.
