Ljubljana: The European Commission’s first ever EU Anti-Poverty Strategy, formally launched on the sixth of May, frames the next stage of social policy delivery around three quantified targets for 2030 and an enforcement architecture that runs through the European Pillar of Social Rights Action Plan. The text was presented by Commissioner Roxana Minzatu at an event in the Berlaymont attended by social ministers, NGO representatives and the European Trade Union Confederation. It marks the first time the bloc has codified a single, dedicated strategic document on poverty since the open method of coordination years.
The headline target is a reduction of fifteen million in the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion by the end of 2030, of which five million children. The figures align with the EPSR Action Plan’s existing 2030 commitments and are calibrated against the 2019 baseline measured by the Eurostat AROPE indicator. A complementary work-package target, requiring that seventy-eight percent of adults aged twenty to sixty-four be in employment by 2030, brings the strategy into formal connection with the Skills Union initiative launched in March 2025.
The delivery instruments are organised across four pillars. The first concerns access to essential services, with new minimum standards for energy poverty intervention, housing affordability metrics and digital inclusion. The second focuses on labour market participation, including a Quality Jobs Roadmap that will set out Commission expectations on the implementation of the Adequate Minimum Wages Directive, with the next transposition deadlines running through 2027. The third addresses social protection adequacy, building on the Council Recommendation on access to social protection for workers and the self-employed. The fourth pillar covers child poverty, taking the European Child Guarantee out of its initial deployment phase and into a recurring monitoring cycle.
Slovenia’s position in the launch reflects the country’s own track record on poverty reduction. The Slovenian government has, over the last decade, run one of the lowest AROPE rates in the bloc, helped by a combination of low income inequality and strong public service coverage. Ljubljana’s social affairs ministry has offered to host the first regional implementation forum under the new strategy, scheduled for September, where Member States in the southeast region will exchange evidence on what has worked locally and what has resisted the policy mix.
Funding is drawn from existing budget lines, with no new Multiannual Financial Framework allocation tied to the strategy. The European Social Fund Plus remains the primary vehicle, with a fresh round of dedicated calls planned through DG Employment in the second half of the year. The Recovery and Resilience Facility supplies a smaller secondary track, with several Member State plans already booking social investment milestones for completion before the facility’s 2026 closure. The European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, repurposed in the last MFF revision, is being marketed as the safety net for sectoral redundancies.
The European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee is preparing a draft own-initiative report that will scrutinise the absence of new funding, with rapporteur appointments expected next week. The European Anti-Poverty Network, which has been campaigning for a binding social rights framework for more than a decade, welcomed the strategy’s existence but criticised the reliance on existing instruments. The European Trade Union Confederation flagged that the seventy-eight percent employment target understates the underlying quality-of-work concerns.
The EPSCO Council will discuss the strategy at its June formation.
