1. 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

2. 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

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

4. 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 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

5. 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

6. Europe 2020 Poverty Target
Despite high unemployment, low salaries and low social protection expenditures (in % 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

8. 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

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

10. 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)

11. 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

12. Housing construction - Number of rental flats constructed with public support

13. 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

14. 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

15. 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