A heated debate between the services of the Commission was won by minimalists who favoured a poverty reduction target of 25% by the end of the decade, according to sources close to the draft.
The target is to be unveiled on Wednesday (3 March) as part of a ten-year economic plan called 'Europe 2020', which will replace the EU's flagship Lisbon Strategy for growth and jobs.
The initial proposal, put forward by Employment and Social Affairs Commissioner László Andor and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy, was to reduce poverty by a third.
That initial objective was deemed realistic by many, including social NGOs, which usually advocate a 50% reduction.
Poverty indicators
But more than the target itself, the indicators to which it is pegged are a matter of concern as critics say they fail to properly measure inequalities.
According to the latest draft of the Commission's 'Europe 2020' proposal, seen by EurcActiv, the poverty target is to be set on the basis of a so-called "anchored in time indicator" rather than the relative poverty rate.
The relative poverty rate measures the proportion of people living with less than 60% of current median income and has been used by the Commission in its Eurobarometer surveys for the past 10 years. By contrast, the "anchored in time rate" measures economic growth and its impact on general living standards rather than poverty as such.
Recent EU statistics indicate that 17% of people across the EU (almost 80 million Europeans) currently live below the poverty threshold. This alarming fact resonates strongly with EU citizens, as underlined in recent Eurobarometer surveys.
Social NGOs' ire
"The proposal to establish the fight against poverty and social exclusion as one of nine key flagship projects within the Europe 2020 strategy gives some room for hope," said Fintan Farrell, director of the European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN).
"But it requires that the EU leaders take a step forward and establish a target for the reduction of poverty based on the agreed relative poverty indicator as part of the 2020 strategy," he told EurActiv.
Farrell believes that the relative poverty rate is the most accurate indicator as it is pegged to income and living standards in the society in which a person lives. The 'anchored in time' rate, by contrast, measures economic growth and its impact on general living standards rather than reducing poverty and inequality through redistribution mechanisms, he said.
"The assumption that economic growth will raise the adequacy of standards of living of all, just as a tide lifts all boats together, is not often observed in practice," noted the EAPN director, who stressed that tackling poverty without looking at wealth redistribution "is like hosting the Winter Olympics without snow".
France behind the proposed indicator?
France is the only EU country to have adopted 'anchored in time' poverty as its primary indicator. But statistics there show that economic growth does not automatically alleviate social inequalities, argue NGOs.
Indeed, the French branch of EAPN has concluded that whereas poverty decreased from 13.1% to 12.5% in 2007, relative poverty increased from 13.1% to 13.3% that same year.
The increase was also accompanied by rises in the intensity of poverty and the number of young people and children at risk of poverty, as well as growth of in-work poverty, over-indebtedness and restricted access to health.
"If they shift to the anchored-in-time poverty rate we think we might be better not having a target at all than to lose the relative poverty rate," Farrell underscored.
Along the same lines, Eurochild, the European umbrella organisation promoting the welfare and rights of children and young people, stressed that quantified targets to reduce general poverty are too focused on income poverty and material deprivation.
NGOs are convinced that shifting indicators to measure progress under the 2020 strategy will undermine all work carried out on the basis of the relative poverty rate indicator and ultimately hamper comparisons of progress made in past and future decades.
