Almost one in four people in the EU was threatened with poverty or social deprivation in 2010. This is the conclusion of an official report by the European Commission presented in December. According to the report, 115 million people, or 23 percent of the EU population, were designated as poor or socially deprived. The main causes are unemployment, old age and low wages, with more than eight percent of all employees in Europe now belonging to the “working poor.”
Spain leads all other EU countries with a youth unemployment rate of 48 percent. In Greece, Italy, Ireland, Lithuania, Latvia and Slovakia youth unemployment is between 25 percent and 45 percent.
In Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, youth unemployment rates are lower only because training takes longer and many unemployed young people are “parked” in all sorts of schemes that exclude them from the official statistics. But even in these countries the chance of getting a decent-paying job is diminishing.
The growth of poverty and social deprivation is not simply a result of the economic crisis, but rather the result of a deliberate policy on the part of European governments and the EU. In spite of these alarming statistics, the authorities take measures that expand and deepen poverty. With the decision at the last EU summit to include a “debt brake” in the constitutions of all member states, governments have deprived themselves of virtually any possibility of alleviating the social crisis through fiscal measures.
The claim that austerity measures are being used to shore up national treasuries is a blatant lie. Public finances are insolvent because they have been plundered by the same financial elite that now benefits from the austerity measures. Taxes on profits, property and high incomes have been repeatedly reduced. Many Eastern European countries, where poverty is particularly high, have introduced a flat tax of less than 20 percent.
The EU report documenting the growth of poverty also contains figures on the increasing gap between rich and poor. In Germany, the richest one percent of the population possesses 23 percent of all wealth and the richest tenth controls 60 percent. Half of the population possesses just two percent of all wealth.
The report says: “A structure where the poor own less than 5 percent, the middle classes own 30-35 percent, and the rich own over 60 percent represents a typical pattern to be found in most European countries.”
In the course of the last twenty years the financial elite has lost all restraint and declared war on the working class. If democratic elections stand in its way, it sweeps them aside. Nor does the financial oligarchy shy away from the violent suppression of social resistance.
Like the late 18th Century French aristocracy on the eve of the revolution, today’s financial aristocracy is not prepared to yield even a small fraction of its privileges or wealth.
The financial elite is supported by representatives of the wealthy middle classes in the media, the established political parties, the trade unions and the ex-left milieu, who insist that there is no alternative to austerity and use every means to sabotage social opposition.
The return of mass poverty to Europe sets the stage for the return of revolution. The working class and the youth must prepare themselves for the inevitable confrontation with the financial elite by breaking with its political representatives in Social Democracy, the trade unions, the Left Party and other pseudo-left organizations, and undertaking the fight for a socialist programme through the building of the Socialist Equality parties and the International Committee of the Fourth International across Europe.