Slovakia and 2020 Poverty Target EAPN Capacity Building Meeting Poverty in the European Union: Building a Common Vision for Action 27th September, Brussels Zuzana Kusá Slovak AntiPoverty Network/ Institute for Sociology of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

Content Implementation of Europe 2020 targets Social situation in Slovakia and Impact of austerity measures on on income protection employment services effordability and access to services Involvement of stakeholders on policy-making Approach to most vulnerable groups What we (can) do – activities of Slovak AntiPoverty Network

Social situation in Slovakia – quick overview Unemployment: 13.9 % (1stQ 2012) Longterm unemployment: 7.8% Share of population on MI benefit: 6.3% (2011)

Income povery and material deprivation MI benefits (basic allowance with several preconditoned contributions) are very low in 2011 average total benefit with contributions was 62 euro per month per person Since 2009 MI benefits had not been indexed (though VAT was increased to 20% and footstuff prices increased by 9%) and the plan is not to index them till 2014 Deprivation rate (4 items) Slovakia Best performing country General population 19.2 0.9 Iceland Children in single parents households 23.1 4.1 Norway Children in jobless families 78.8 7.8 Sweden

Implementation of Europe 2020 targets Lack of ambitions Employment Increase is the only highlighted antipoverty objective in the Slovak NRP but practical steps are postponed after reassessment of the present active employment measures Missing sub-targets for children, people living in poverty concentrations ( marginalised Roma communities) Focus on reduction of deficit at the expense of access to services, adequacy of income Missing evaluation of implemented policies

Europe 2020 Poverty Target Despite high unemployment, low salaries and low social protection expenditures (in 2009 18.8% of GDP) all poverty indicators for Slovakia are rather favourable (under the EU-average) Reduced political attention,unwillingness to define poverty as public issue and not as individual (group/ethnic problem) or postponing poverty (dealing with income poverty, access to services) to „better times“ after the economic growth

Cuts in employment policies 2008 2009 2010 2011 Graduate practice 21,176 17,295 Education and training programmes 8,824 1,367 Contributions for work commuting 28,909 17,778 Start-grants for self-employment 15,033 11,402 Employment

What do data say: Inability of Roma households to keep home adequately warm (Source: UNDP 2010)

Access to education Share of expenditures for education (as % of GDP) is under the EU27 average and has various negative impacts Missing ambition to increase the share of 3-5 years children in kindergardens (less than 20 % of children from families on social benefit attend kindergarten) Missing ambition to introduce Roma language as language of instruction (or mastery of teacher assistants), though 58 % of Roma households use Roma language on daily basis Insufficient scale of teacher assistants programme (1 assistant per more than 1 hundred disadvantaged pupils in average)

Cuts in support of housing construction 2008 2009 2010 2011 State financial support (€ million) 8.53 5.06 4.06 2.86 Number of constructed municipal rental flats 633 314 241 169 Despite low number of dwellings and low number of public rental flats (less than 3% of housing stock) and desparate stituation in Roma marginalised communities support of public housing construction ihas been planned to be 0 in 2012 and 2013

Housing construction - Number of rental flats constructed with public support

Vulnerable groups - Roma National Strategy for Integration of Roma Community was approved by the Government in January 2012 but work on action plans has been halted Problem of destitution of Roma communities is increasingly criminalised; Roma are called „maladjusted“ in official documents (Union of towns and villages) and Ministry of interior has been put in charge of working out policy framework for Roma communities

Slovak AntiPoverty Network Position is identical with EAPN position Effort to raise public attention to poverty problem as human right problem Public advocacy of social rights Assessment of policy measures Activities: Organisation of conferences, press release, interviews and articles for mass media, comments to new legislation and participation in comment procedures, in working groups

EAPN questions Some EAPN Questions and Challenges   Is the current EU poverty target a useful instrument to drive policy change to reduce poverty? Are all 3 indicators used appropriate?? Would sub-targets be useful? How can we get back a focus on the full range of OMC indicators – eg depth and intensity of poverty? How can we ensure that MS deliver through effective integrated strategies, backed by EU funding, that make a concrete impact on people’s lives Some SAPN answers Infrastructural indicators such as availability of community service facilities, number of houses per 1 thousand inhabitants , number o pupils per teacher measuring availability and access to services should be used Statistical coverage of most disadvantaged should be in focus at least in the same way than technical issues of improving poverty indicators of second order or combinations and separation of indicators