President of the European Commission,
Commissioner Andor,
Distinguished guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
It is a pleasure to be with you all today, to address this conference, and share with you my concerns, and hopes, for people in poverty and social exclusion.
The data which I will present on screen, and which I am sure, you are familiar with, bears witness to the reality of the current poverty situation in Europe.
No matter how we interpret the indicators, the fact remains, that one in every four Europeans, lives in poverty, or at risk of poverty and social exclusion.
It is within this context that I address you today.
Poverty not only persists amongst us, but continuous to be, a growing concern in Europe.
“The poor will always be amongst us” I was taught as part of my Christian upbringing. To tell you the truth, I never saw this statement, as one intended to lead to the fatalistic attitude, often attributed to medieval Christian Europe, and reflected in the well known exhortation, that we need to suffer in this world, to attain salvation in the next.
I have, to the contrary, interpreted this dictum, as a call for us, to guard, against any complacency in the ongoing struggle against poverty.
For this is, a truly ongoing struggle, just as the struggles for democracy, greater social justice and better education and health services, should remain our ongoing struggles, if we want to effectively safeguard and enhance Europe’s social values.
However, I must admit, that I am under no illusion that poverty can be readily solved, given the society in which we live, the policies that inform it, and the economic interests that drive these policies.
I believe that we must acknowledge, that poverty is not a matter of individual, family or community choice or deficiency; but is rooted in political, social and economic injustices.
On the other hand, I believe that, we must admit that many policymakers are mostly driven by overarching economic strategies, which many a time serve the people who devise them. Nonetheless, these strategies also condition people’s lives, and the various social systems that govern them.
However, we cannot afford to be complacent, as the poor cannot wait.
The world is not static but in flux. New issues arise, including issues concerning old and new forms of poverty, stark or relative.
We cannot therefore confront poverty without looking at the larger picture, and without being totally honest with ourselves.
The term ‘Neoliberalism’ is perhaps not a common one used in this kind of fora, though it is commonly referred to in academic literature, especially in the social sciences, concerning the current socio-economic scenario.
Critics of neoliberalism have demonstrated how this philosophy, of economic and social thinking, has spawned greater disparities in access to resources, and therefore decent living.
Capitalism, though all pervasive with its long tentacular reaches, greatly conditions but does not necessarily determine our lives.
I say this with a sense of urgency and a strong sense of hope.
Only thus, can we continue to believe in the possibility of change, and in our ability to make a difference.
I take this opportunity to genuinely urge political parties and social movements in Europe to make, or continue to make, the struggle against Neoliberalism, and its discontents, their main target.
All too often, we see parties, with strong anti-poverty, social-solidarity traditions, uncritically taking on board Neoliberal mantras, under the pretext that there is no alternative.
In the case of political parties, this often results from short term interests and goals.
There is the constant need, for political parties to win elections within short time frames, which often means pandering to those influential powers that are sold onto the Neoliberal cause.
They embrace the often illusory, but largely appealing popular opinion which connects with aspects of people’s everyday life, but often in a contradictory manner. Some are successful at winning elections this way.
As an election strategy, this is perceived as strength.
On the other hand, the market has proved, time and time again, that it requires regulation to safeguard the interests of the vulnerable.
Vulnerability marks the fate of an ever-growing social sector, as various social groupings, formerly middle class, become déclassé. The market cannot be left to its own devices.
The European Union has thankfully a social charter.
Society needs safeguards against the rule of the market to ensure everyone exercises her or his right to a decent living.
And yet we have seen that gains for which democratic struggles have taken place, such as the right to a free and good quality education, to a good health service and to a decent pension, among others, are being eroded in several parts of the world.
In Chile, the country which gave rise to Neoliberalism in its violent experimental form, even sending a child to a State primary school, comes at a cost, and I am not referring to simply a taxpayer’s cost, but I am talking about fees!
In Europe, we need to be on the lookout, to ensure that our social values are not just preserved but enhanced, so as, the situation in Europe will not come to this, for surely this would generate more swathes of poverty owing to the incurrence of greater debts, or greater costs for intergenerational social mobility.
One of the most nefarious aspects of the current and predominant mode of thinking is ‘responsibilisation’, that accentuates the role of the individual, as being solely responsible for her or his own, welfare or wellbeing.
While I am not playing down the issue of personal responsibility, I am concerned that, the overemphasis here is simply a pretext to make states withdraw from their responsibilities.
They are allowed to withdraw from all this to leave everything into the hands of the individual as consumer – many being helpless consumers.
This is the challenge facing not only Europe but the world in any genuine fight against poverty.
Here I would like to pose a question to you: Are well earned rights such as, free good quality education, including higher education, free and accessible good quality health care and pensions, to name but three, to be left to the markets, as consumption goods, or are they matters of social, rather than simply individual responsibility, public rather than consumption goods?
In terms of tackling poverty seriously and gaining social cohesion, the answer should be unequivocal.
Poverty takes different forms and this is often conditioned by context.
The issue of the ‘long-term unemployed’ and now the issue of the ‘working poor’ have been on Europe’s agenda for a while.
We need to revisit, and revise some of the strategies used to combat them and explore their strengths and limitations.
While the business community must be heard, we must also listen to other sectors of society.
Here another question comes to mind:
Is the minimum wage good enough to ensure a decent living in this day and age?
I know there are concerns in this regard, even in my own country, and this was raised in the green paper, which I commissioned when Minister for the Family and Social Solidarity.
Others have raised the issue of a social wage.
I consider it a matter of urgency, for the social partners to come together, to discuss this matter.
In our quest to fight poverty on a macro level, we tend to forget people’s immediate needs that can, and should, be addressed directly within their community.
Community-based interventions would provide a platform of resources, with the ultimate aim of providing early intervention, and in the long run, improving the quality of life of all within that community, and address poverty at its very roots.
In Malta, we are in the process of setting up Family Resource Centres with this purpose in mind. This important approach is underlined in the Social Investment Package, which was presented in February 2013.
We need to revisit outworn clichés, regarding solutions to access to a greater share of resources being dependant solely, on education and training.
Sociologists keep telling us that these are not independent variables, but can contribute to confronting the issue in play with other sectors of society.
We cannot keep promising ‘lucrative jobs’ for young people to further their education, as if this is the whole purpose of education, when these jobs are at a premium globally.
Today, even young people coming from middle class families acquire more qualifications than their parents, but cannot enjoy their standard of living.
We persist with the fallacy of attributing the issue of poverty to simply lack of education and training. We are turning a ‘jobs crisis’ as the global productive system continues to be unable to create enough jobs, into a skills crisis, meaning that people do not have the right skills.
In my view, the current dominant Lifelong Learning discourse, being tied to learning and relearning for jobs, and the idea of a ‘Knowledge Economy’, need to be viewed critically in this regard.
There is a growing literature that calls some of the claims made in this regard into question.
There are claims that people, despite earning more qualifications, are being channelled into low paid jobs, often part-time jobs, or contract work at that. Jobs that place them at risk of poverty, being insecure in their ‘flexible employment’, and hence becoming members of the precariete’ class.
My final point concerns the issue of some of the ‘new poor’ in our midst.
It concerns the issue of Migration, an occurrence throughout history, but which has perhaps become more intensified in recent years, as a result of a combination of factors.
I will not repeat the staggering statistics of Sub-Saharan African migrants lost at sea.
For, for those who survive, the ordeal, it is equally disastrous.
Needless to say, poverty becomes one of the main issues among asylum seekers.
Migrants’ poverty, is also increased by racist discourses, which render them the perceived threat to local, ‘autochthonous’ persons and the availability of jobs.
Adding to this, the exploitative nature of their serving as a grossly underpaid and possibly even non paid, ‘reserve workforce’, and the process of marginalisation, is breeding further poverty and vulnerability.
With no citizenship rights and social benefits, migrants can only make a living at the very margins of society. The only outlet seems to be the low paid and insecure informal economy, which constitutes an important feature of a number of European countries.
We need to shift the discourse, enabling people to realise why migrants leave their country.
Rather than blame the victims, we should blame the perpetrators, historical and contemporary.
As Europeans, we need to ensure the provision of policies, that are born out of the recognition of an important provision in the 1951 Geneva Convention.
This is the recognition of a person’s inalienable right to asylum, allowing for possible instances of “irregularity” in recognition of situations that lead to “forced migration.”
The required policies, should be international, since we are dealing with international, global phenomena, not national ones, requiring national solutions. At the moment we are adhering to national solutions, to an international issue.
We should not permit our policies in Europe to be guided by the selfish interest of political and economic powerhouses on the continent and beyond.
Selfishness has its casualties, poverty being one of them.
Today, I come here, to hopefully stimulate your thoughts for today’s discussion on poverty. There is an urgent need to revisit polices, if Europe is to ensure that it can reach the targets set out for itself, in the Europe 2020 strategy.
You may recall almost a year ago, the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Durão Barroso, when he stated, that we have fallen backwards in our fight against poverty in line with the Europe 2020 strategy. He did not mince his words when saying: ‘we are worse off than we were before’.
Mr Baroso’s remarks last year, should set the very first questions in play for today’s deliberations. Is Europe’s poor in better shape today? Have they made any progress in their plight to policy makers to be given more consideration?
We all know that unfortunately we have very little to be proud of!
Having made quite a number of impertinent remarks, I would like to end my contribution today, with a quote from Nelson Mandela on the fight against poverty, when he said:
“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity; it is an act of justice. Poverty is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”
Mandela’s words put a lot of responsibility on all of us, in whatever position we are in the leadership of our respective countries.
Hence, I augur you all, a fruitful conference and much reflection, so that you may make a difference in people’s lives, especially in the lives of the most vulnerable amongst us.
Poverty is not becoming to Europe.
Europe was always the promoter of social values.
Let’s all stand up for what we boast we are.
On a personal note, I take the opportunity to thank Commissioner Andor for his endeavours in the sector and augur him all the best for the future.