Combating Social Exclusion: EU and Spain’s Strategies
The European Union has developed over 250 transnational projects and preparatory measures to define and support its program objectives. These objectives are based on three key areas:
- Improve the understanding of social exclusion and poverty through comparable indicators.
- Organize exchanges on policies implemented.
- Foster national capacity development of social actors to address social exclusion and poverty.
These objectives frame the Community and national plans to combat exclusion, aiming for full employment, access to resources, rights, and assets. They also focus on preventing exclusion risks and supporting vulnerable populations. National action plans have identified unemployment and job insecurity, health problems, discrimination, xenophobia, and poor housing as the principal risks of exclusion.
A global goal for these programs is to ensure that the main mechanisms for the distribution of opportunities and resources are sufficient to meet the needs of people most exposed to social exclusion and enable them to exercise their fundamental rights.
In 2003, Member States submitted their second National Plan against exclusion, emphasizing the setting of specific targets and indicators for poverty reduction, strengthening the gender perspective, and highlighting the risks of exclusion affecting immigrants.
Alongside these plans, the EU maintains and strengthens the performance of its Structural Funds. The Committee believes that the Structural Funds are the main financial instrument for the European Commission to intervene in the regions. Community initiatives have played an important role in combating poverty. The new EQUAL initiative supports innovative approaches to tackle problems of exclusion, discrimination, and inequalities in employment.
The EU recognizes the need to promote and improve minimum income schemes in each member state. The Economic and Social Committee highlights the essence of protection systems and their goals. Income protection systems must address situations where economic changes are estimated to have uneven redistributive effects, potentially generating new categories of persons at risk, such as those in temporary employment, women, and individuals in unskilled jobs.
The Welfare System’s Response to Social Exclusion in Spain
Spain’s National Plan for Social Inclusion
Following the guidelines established by the Community Action Program to Combat Poverty, Spain launched its first National Action Plan for Social Inclusion (2001-03). The social inclusion strategy and the open coordination method used in this process represent a new and effective model of performance in terms of involvement, commitment, and participation of all stakeholders while designing mechanisms and measures to address social exclusion.
Building on the priorities established in the first plan, the second plan (2003-2005) progressed with corresponding measures from the National Action Plan for Employment. This included the establishment of territorial plans for social inclusion, encouraging the participation of affected individuals and their representatives, and adopting a comprehensive care approach and support for vulnerable groups and individuals. Gender mainstreaming is a core principle and a horizontal approach in all outlined initiatives.
Strategic Goals of the National Plan
The strategic goals, based on agreements reached within Europe, include:
- Reduce by 2% the number of people with income below 60% of the median.
- Improve policy coordination and cooperation between administrations.
- Facilitate access to new technologies for populations at risk, NGOs, and professionals.
- Intensify action against gender violence and increase efforts to promote equality of opportunity between women and men.
- Secure participation and mobilization of all involved actors, including parliamentarians, and foster the creation of discussion forums with NGOs.