Can poverty be eradicated?

The European Commission has launched a strategy to combat poverty across the EU, and soon after Romania said it also started drawing up a national strategy in this regard.

Roxana Vasile, 10.06.2026, 14:00

One in five citizens in the European Union is experiencing poverty. That is why the European Commission proposed at the beginning of May a strategy and a mechanism by which European institutions, Member States and the main social actors can intervene more effectively to combat this phenomenon by 2050. With an additional investment of just 0.25% of the Union’s GDP, 18 million Europeans could be lifted out of poverty.
The Romanian Commissioner and Vice-President of the European Commission Roxana Mînzatu, the spearhead of this initiative, outlined a possible future line of action:
ʺWe would like a legal instrument regarding the minimum standards of support services for people who are inactive, who are not looking for a job, but could work, because often people who are in precarious situations and receive certain types of social assistance are not motivated or do not choose to go to work, because the salary may not be sufficient to ensure their daily living, transportation to work, clothes, food, care for the child who is left alone at home. And, then, some of the instruments that you will see, and, of course, there are also recommendations, guidelines, but also this possible proposal for a directive, are intended to help member states develop this type of support services for people who are inactive and to think of policies that work. And this means that the answer will not always be social assistance, no matter how well-targeted it may be, just a job is not what is sometimes needed if it’s poorly paid or unsuitable. How can we help a person find a good job? Through a combination of things, such as providing them with additional training, support with care services for the child or children who have to stay at home while the parent is at work, through an incentive for the employer, subsidizing perhaps some of the salary costs for a while, aspects that also naturally depend on the involvement of the government, but which start as a political ambition at European level.”
In addition to ensuring access to quality jobs, the strategy also aims to address the housing crisis, given that the lack of affordable housing is considered by many Europeans to be an immediate and urgent problem, and one million of them are homeless. For the elderly, the focus is on decent pensions, and for the millions of Europeans living with a disability, on their full social integration. A separate chapter is dedicated to children, because, in the last five years, no significant progress has been made in reducing child poverty. In their case, the proposal mentions early education, health services and school meals, in parallel with supporting their families.

Authorities, the business community, civil society and the people in question will all be involved in this plan designed by the European Commission to reduce the number of Europeans in poverty. Roxana Mînzatu explains:

“This anti-poverty package requires the involvement of all decision-makers, both the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union, as well as governments, regional and local authorities and civil society. We have also included the element of shared responsibility from the private sector, which must join this effort to combat poverty, because it is an important goal not only from a moral and democratic perspective and in terms of social cohesion, but also, naturally, from an economic perspective. And obviously, the set of measures included in this package are to be implemented with the contribution of European bodies as well as with the involvement of governments and member states.ʺ

With over a quarter of its population faced with poverty and social exclusion, Romania is, together with Bulgaria and Greece, in the top three poorest countries in the European Union. However, just one day after the European Commission launched its strategy to combat poverty, Bucharest also said it began to draft a national anti-poverty and social inclusion strategy and submitted application to obtain funding worth some 3 million euros under the Technical Assistance Program 2021–2027. The interim labour minister Dragoş Pîslaru pointed out that Romania thus became the first member country of the European Union to respond in a concrete manner to the appeal by the European Commission.

According to Minister Pîslaru, the draft proposal submitted for funding is not restricted to the Ministry of Labour and subordinate agencies, but concerns all institutions involved in drafting policies related to combating poverty. A low participation in the labour market, health problems, high social costs and loss of human capital, approximately one million children exposed to different forms of vulnerability and risk of social exclusion are just some of the aspects that must be taken into account in Romania and tackled with sound social policies, said Dragoș Pîslaru.

For sociologist Vladimir Ionaș, the decisions taken in Brussels to reduce poverty are more than welcome, because they would encourage national governments to pay more attention to people in need:

“Unfortunately, in Romania, the serious discussions about how the state can provide real support to children, encourage birth rates, solve the demographic problem, help people at risk of poverty have not yielded results. It’s a good sign in my view that the Commission now has deemed it is time to get involved, to try to work with all member states, because, if it comes up with guidelines that can work at the European level, then maybe the governments of Romania, Bulgaria or Greece will also successfully implement them, under pressure from the European Commission.”

In any case, all plans to fight against poverty must be waged at grassroots level and in the long term, even perhaps decades, because, otherwise, no matter how good they are in theory, they risk being just empty words and a waste of money.