Poverty and social exclusion: the new European agenda for policy and research

Abstract

Recent years have seen increasing concern about the growth of poverty and social exclusion within Europe. In western Europe this has been associated with the resurgence of high unemployment; in central and eastern Europe the problems of the transition to a market economy are now raising similar concerns. This growing concern has been evident in debates at the level of the European Union (EU). The anti-poverty programmes that the European Commission has been sponsoring have included action projects, research studies and efforts at statistical harmonisation. However, concern about social exclusion has now spilled outside the narrow realm of the social security section of the Directorate-General V (DGV) (Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs). Social exclusion is written into the Maastricht Treaty and into the objectives of the Structural Funds. The Directorate-General XII (DGXII) (Science, Research and Development) includes social exclusion within its Fourth Framework Research Programme. Alongside these initiatives by the EU institutions, the Council of Europe has recently been commissioning studies of social exclusion focused on the wider range of European countries that make up its membership, and informed by its specific interest in human rights (Duffy, 1995). European research on social exclusion seems destined to expand quite markedly during the next few years. Nevertheless, this growing range of initiatives is built on the series of poverty programmes that have been in progress since the mid-1970s. It may therefore be worth recalling the history of these programmes, as background to the argument in the rest of this chapter. The first European anti-poverty programme (1975-80) included nine national reports on poverty and anti-poverty policy (European Commission, 1981).