Debate: Adequate minimum income ensuring active inclusion
Date: TUESDAY, 14 MARCH 2023
Speaker: Dragoş Pîslaru
Country: Spain
Language: EN

Minimum income schemes serve as social safety nets, guaranteeing a minimum standard of living and the right to dignity at all stages of life. For people lacking sufficient resources and decent, stable employment, access to adequate minimum income plays an essential role in reducing poverty, social exclusion and inequalities and such schemes should be combined with incentives and measures enabling labour market activation for people who are able to work. Why do we have this debate? We have this debate because the situation in Europe is such, that there are many Member States that do not have such provisions. I myself, as a Minister of Labour in 2016 initiated the law on the minimum income for inclusion, it has not been implemented in 2017, and it should, and it has been postponed. It is still not implemented today. That is why we need this debate. Representing the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs, I would like to ask the Council the following questions: how will the Council encourage Member States to gradually set their minimum income schemes to at least the level of the national at risk of poverty threshold while providing incentives to reintegrate people who can work into the labour market? How will Member States ensure that beneficiaries of such schemes are not forced to accept precarious work? How does the Council intend to improve the coverage of the existing national scheme? How will Member States tackle the non-take-up problem – a very serious problem? What kind of mechanism will they establish to raise the awareness and ensure that those eligible are receiving the support that they can actually benefit from it? How will the Member States ensure that that such minimum income schemes do not substitute for social policy measures in other areas such as housing, healthcare, disability support or labour market integration? And how are Member States cooperating with social partners, civil society and all the other relevant stakeholders on the design, implementation and monitoring of the minimum income schemes, and where do they see room for improvement? The Committee of Employment and Social Affairs would also like to ask the Commission a couple of questions. How does the Commission intend to ensure that Member States gradually increase their minimum income schemes to at least the international AROPE threshold while providing the incentives that I have referred to before and enabling the measures to reintegrate those who can work in the labour market? Then the question is how will the Commission monitor the implementation of this recommendation and the contribution to achieving the 2030 targets, in particular, reducing the number of people at risk of poverty and social exclusion by at least 15 million, including the 5 million children – we are, right now, close to two years after Porto. How will it help Member States to tackle the non-take-up problem? Similar question for the Council as well. And what action does it intend to promote non-discrimination in the context of the minimum income schemes? And last but not least, certainly, how will it involve the social partners at European level in implementing and monitoring the Council recommendation? These are the questions that stem from the debate that we had in the Committee of Employment and Social Affairs. You will hear my colleagues underlining other very important elements in that. But I am really glad that we have this opportunity to discuss about this very, very serious situation. And I will thank you very much for your pertinent answers.