Schulz & Thyssen - 4th Annual Convention of the European Platform Against Poverty & Social Exclusion

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• published: 20 Nov 2014
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EN ES - 4th Annual Convention of the European Platform Against Poverty and Social Exclusion - Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the adoption of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (20th November 1989) - Opening by Martin SCHULZ, President of the EP, and Marianne THYSSEN, Member of the EC in charge of Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, after an introduction by 2 children, Dominic, who is disabled, and Natalia from Spain - 20.11.2014 - Brussels. Martin Schulz (extracts): "At a time when finances are stretched, I urge all member states to make full use of the European Social Fund. I also urge them to ensure that the newly created Fund for European Aid to the most Deprived is well tapped. With a few weeks before winter I want to also highlight the Food Distribution Scheme for the most deprived. It was shocking that some member states had wanted to end this programme considering that there are an increasing number of people in need of it. I am glad that the European Parliament's view prevailed and we still have this means of delivering essentials to the hardest hit. We also need to immediately address the youth unemployment rate. It is unpardonable that nearly 25% of our best trained, fittest, and most enterprising people are not able to put their skills and energies to good use. Instead they face poverty and uncertainty as their future. I am concerned that member states have failed to use all of the EU funds available this year through the Youth Employment Initiative. This is money which the EU is making available to support national youth employment guarantee schemes. When we met with Heads of States and Governments for the Employment Summit in Milan some weeks ago, I urged Member States to make full use of the available funds from now on, and not to delay any further. The under use of this fund is worrying because it signals that member states are not necessarily prioritising getting young people into work as much as they should. Poverty, and most notably social exclusion, are also about discrimination. On this I urge the Council to urgently adopt the directive on implementing the principle of equal treatment between persons and ask the Commission to close gaps in the existing anti-discrimination legislation. As for objectives for the next few years, our goals need to be ambitious. People and their basic needs must feature at the forefront of the public policy agenda. Over these last years we have seen all EU countries do their utmost to preserve their credit rating. I now want to see them committing to policies which will give them a AAA social rating, as suggested by President Jean-Claude Juncker in the European Parliament's plenary when the Commission was elected in October. Taxes and austerity were heaped on normal people very quickly. This exacerbated the precarious situation of many and pushed others into a life of poverty until then unknown to them. On the contrary, it is proving extremely difficult to introduce fairer burden sharing of the effects of the crisis. Modest initiatives such as what is going to be left of the financial transaction tax, are struggling to get off the ground while. At the same time, as we have seen so spectacularly recently, huge multinationals continue playing each member state against the other in a race to the corporate tax bottom. Each year it is estimated that in the EU around 1 trillion euros is lost to tax evasion, avoidance and fraud. This is a colossal amount of money which is not directed to helping the less fortunate and into investments which will yield jobs and education. With vast sums of money like this at stake, addressing poverty and social exclusion while failing to correct the flaws of our taxation policies is similar to arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. The European Parliament will want to see a very strong priority given to taxation policy by the Juncker Commission. We need to have concrete initiatives and we need them on the table now. The European Parliament welcomed the announcement of the proposal on automatic exchange of information regarding tax-rulings, as we believe that increased transparency can only lead to better and fairer practices. On the fiscal and budgetary side we must also now begin to make some proper room for social concerns. (...)" Read all Martin Schulz's speech here: http://goo.gl/Rxl0ld Commissioner Marianne Thyssen's speech is here: http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_SPEECH-14-2000_en.htm © Frédérick Moulin 2014 - EU2014 - All rights reserved.