from brussels live a thanks so much for coming on i mean the e.u. is in the news for nearly destroying the good friday agreement for a vaccination war your report suggesting that well what's called the often the greatest capitalist project in history is not fit for purpose how did you arrive at that conclusion but essentially my report tries to show that the e.u. is not willing critz to combat poverty because it has organized competition between the member states in taxation matters in the area of wages and and social contributions by huge lawyers we refer to this as fiscal dumping and social then b. and also because it imposes on member states very tights macroeconomy street jackets in order to avoid macroeconomy imbalances across the e.u. this makes it very difficult for states to spend money on social investment at the risk of increasing their of it and so today is

a unique opportunity to really rethink these issues and perhaps eventually create the e.u. into it to alleviate poverty within its borders again to the macroeconomic pressures by virtue of the euro arguably in a 2nd but you think there is recognition of what you just said in that as you say in the report there is no target anymore for poverty reduction in the 2020 poverty target of 20000000 was missed by 8700000 men women and children in the. indeed so in 2010 your 2020 strategy had been announced and the. 20000000 people by 2020 this time it was entirely missed and i think it has traumatizing. this issue makers who do not want to commit to which they. may be difficult to reach setting targets. for results and this is something which

is difficult to obtain i believe we can do better i believe that you should set to guide states but especially to better support member states in initiating this and that means fighting the current unhealthy competition between states who because they want to be competitive in it i'm not making the fight against a priority in their domestic policies. well as you know the you always defended self as being a cat he took the whole regardless of the criticism but i mean one might ask you after reading this report isn't the point of neoliberalism meritocracy that some states have more poor people and others have richer people isn't that competition baked in to the whole european union project well there is a very strong tendency since at least 30 years to basically blame poverty

young on the people who are the victims of poverty by into sizing that they should seek to be better qualified that they should be more active in the search for employment and they made the wrong choices in life and should leave them blame themselves for their condition but that is simply not realistic we've actually seen many people who cannot find work despite their efforts because of the difficulties of reconciling family with with with work life because of their health problems because they do not have access to prove qualifications and let us not forget that large number of people but with young children children crew have committed no crime but who are inflicted this lifelong sentence of having to bear the consequences of its you which as we know should be a handicap for them or for their adult lives and that is simply unacceptable almost one quarter of children in the e.u. are born in

a family that is at risk of poverty and that really is is extremely problematic for their future because of the stress speech are in because of the difficulty state they will have in elite or lives to be productive adults and of course now their schools are closed because of coronavirus what do you think as special robin to will be the generational damage of as you put it 19400000 children living in poverty b. i mean when it just me mental degradation of those children or when they give rise to anger. well one impact of the crisis and the closure of many schools across the e.u. is that children through depended on school meals programs in order to have at least one adequate meal but they do not have access to this anymore and it is knots phenomenon limited to developing countries the dependence of children on school means it actually is benefiting many children across europe in the u.k.

and in the e.u. 27 countries and it is indeed going to have a severe impact moreover many households are not connected to the internet and therefore the shifting of courses online will increase the gap between the children whose parents can afford good access to internet and the others who do not have such access and and will basically increase the rates of dropouts from schools like an extremely worried about the consequences of the current situation well much over the you know but a so-called mainstream me here in britain characterize jeremy coleman the former labor leaders plans for broadband to be broadband communism the greater availability of government funded or banned internet you think it is crucial for the. it is increasingly crucial to ensure

access to 2 treats in it for households many social benefits are now essentially accessible only 'd by filling in forms online and for families who either have no internet access or are not trained to to fill in these forms it can be cheaper batek we have many examples of social benefits never being claimed by people because of their digital illiteracy because they do not know how to fill in these forms and i think it's a very serious problem we should of course digitalize further improve access to internet which we should also be think the idea that digitalization of social social services will actually benefit everyone many people because they are you know older persons or because they are not used to using the computer and may not be able to actually access social services by those means well you mention mental health you didn't say whether they're going to rise up in all european capitals

when they reach their teens but what about health indicators that you expect stunted growth and those kind of indicators given what you just said about who take . it is too early to say what the long term health consequences will be but clearly the years during which. i grew up and and become adults since are absolutely vital for the training of the mind and for the ability to better socialize so i fear that we're producing a generation of. undefeated individuals if you wish who who will be much less actually is it social contacts and interactions and it's fine if they have family support but if they're lived by themselves and if their family has new strong social networks and family networks to to to fall back on it maybe should be problematic now i know there was a war the e.u.

is involved in yugoslavia in the ninety's millions killed injured in displacement in the e.u. might reply to your report by say ok many of the things about the extreme poverty may be correct but that's the price we have to pay for peace in your since world war 2. look what is really disturbing to me is that we looked at the figures of social investments over the past 1015 years investment in education in health in early childhood supports and and other such investments in people and those investments have been declining systematically since 2009 despite there being overall economic progress that apparently has not been a concern for e.u. governments and so i really question the protease they said for themselves i am concerned that the spending on those investments i mentioned in

person to just the g.d.p. had been to trying over the years and the reason for this is economy the sterett this is now also don't see that we should repeat don't bend rethink significantly and we should now invest in people after all of investing in health care education early childhood is the best investment one can make and i really don't understand the protests as they have been said over the past few years well as you know the governments of europe say what is important has been bailing out bankers the financial ization of economies and also the fact is that there are pouring money into social services albeit outsourced privatized ones in and you must be aware as well and i'm sure you are aware a special rapporteur that many will say how do you arrive at these figures and those relative poverty even mean anything you'll note that the right wing press often says we should just retreat to absolute poverty rather than relative poverty

these people are not really poor. well what is true is that it's the 21 percent of the european population that is at risk of poverty and or social exclusion including people who are relatively poor because they make less than 60 percent of the of the average income of just just to make just one year of that one in far more than one in 5 your people in the european union you're saying yes 21 percent more than one in 5 europeans are at risk of poverty now this includes the measure of money tree poverty which is indeed relative poverty it's below 60 percent of the median income but that matters to people if you ask people about how they experience poverty it was speaking about how they are unable to to live decent lives in which they can compare themselves with you know the average person around them and if they cannot afford decent housing decent education if they must are

working in more than one job in order to make a decent standard of living this is just unacceptable not only do we have one european out of 5 that is at risk of poverty but you also have. 90 percent of the working population and he's poor and the phenomenon of working poor has ruined across all the e.u. because we try to create jobs but poor quality jobs under bait 0 hour jobs many jobs as they're called in germany and that is an extremely troubling development yeah i want to explore the coal face of work in a 2nd but do you have believe that this background has contributed to your. being the worst continent in the world to respond to her own of our. well i wouldn't say it's been the worst continent into were we have countries such as the us brazil or

others whose performance is this mill really this is true that he has its services across europe have been tragic by 10 years of austerity measures imposed upon them and we had until recently the recommendations addressed to the e.u. member states to reduce the costs of health care and that has been tragic the social security systems and healthcare systems and we now discover that social resilience was neglected over the years in the name of cost effectiveness and that is partly the result of this is macroeconomic constraints that states have been imposed. as i say e.u. governments the european central bank they will say they needed to bail out banks as a priority and now there will be saying to you there's a 750000000000 euro euro recovery fund to help achieve the 50

percent poverty reduction. well. that's an important initiative but each are not be focused on the reduction of quality at all in fact the e.u. has deployed a series of instruments under the next generation e.u. under that framework if you wish and so the investments will be for the greening of the economy about 37 percent of becoming president facility should take it to that and 20 percent should go to digitalisation of the economy but there's no target sets for investment in in social cohesion and therefore we must hope that the member states will make this a priority in the national plans they submit to receive funding from the e.u. but there's no rush here way to measure the impact on policy on the reduction of inequalities no plan for social cohesion i don't know what. arguably progressive

government in latin america or africa or southeast asia would say about that eliminate a shooter i'll stop you there more from the un special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights after this break. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy confrontation let it be an arms race is on offer and spearing dramatic development only personally i'm going to resist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk.

welcome back i'm still here with the un special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights elevator shooter why do you say in your report you were impressed with the dedication of all those you met. as regards these issues when there's not even a plan about social cohesion i presume that before kobe had let alone what happens

now in the you know i didn't get many people in the european is do shoes would like . to be better equipped to face the emergency we have facing today and to respond better than the don't have the means to do so and part of this is because of the inability for the e.u. to have a nice taxation across the e.u. it requires unanimity and and some small states benefit from the current competition between states they have no confidence either to legislate on on wages and as a result we see these working poor. as a proportion of the working population but actually they do they do legislate on wages they legislate for arguably for low wages isn't that the the whole point i mean why am i asking about why you were impressed by these e.u. figures is what is the role of tech not crossly. within your own exchange poverty i mean if you look at these people like god the european central bank was well known

for having been suspected of fraud that she denies euchre accused of money laundering i mean isn't it obvious that you have these people at the top of the european who don't really care about your remit you know i think the reality is that the report is about the conditions under which the institutions work and i'm not of course passing any judgement on particular individuals but what is clear is that the e.u. has been. basically organizing itself to stimulate growth by trying to increase competition and competitiveness across the european economy without much regard frankly for the socially mats and without much concern for those who may be left out from the general economic progress and growth has been pursued i would say at all expense by trade liberalisation by deregulation of labor markets by organizing fiscal and social competition between the member states

and polity has been basically neglected you see the british people arguably could see a way out of the situation because they weren't members of the yoro all the things you just mentioned there the euro is arguably the key focus of the european union and keeping that stability of the currency so all these regional variations how possibly can you envisage a reduction in poland using macro economics when the euro must be. kept stable and therefore stable for investors which require. well demand true economy policy conversions constraints of course related primarily to the $99.00 member states who are parts of the single currency the euro but not only then and moreover some states such as bug area and remain which have very low wages allowing their economies to be attractive to some investors in the labor intensive

segments of the production chain they fear that if they raise the wages of workers they will be less competitive so and you know there are much wealthier countries wages are difficult to raise because the employers threaten to be organizing in in countries where the wages are lower and it is unfortunately making it very. it's good for unions to bargain in the strong body position with employers in order to ensure that wages increase with productivity gains and i'm very concerned that at the rate of unionization are going down that the bargaining power of unions is weak you're ever because of this threats of employers to to outsource production and that's this is inherent in the construct of the e.u. which is organizing this competition between understates hasn't been attempts right

from the beginning of the european union project to limit the power of trade unions and work in solidarity in favor of technocrats in brussels avallone the so-called 0 hours contract commonly run by the us about international often raised in the silicon valley right at the beginning. from the founders of the european union the limitations the deliberate limiting of union power as part of the project well against the project was that the economy would be under the supervision of the the e use compazine as you call it the european commission in particular and that the social dimension should be left to the member states who should be free to develop social policies the problem is you cannot meet that distinction it is not a watertight distinction you can trace and of course the economy choice is done and you can level effect your mistakes to conduct social policies at domestic level in

particular because to finance or protection schemes you need to have progressive taxation which you cannot afford to have if you're competing across the e.u. with other member states so we have to rethink the construct and that is why in my report i call for rethinking those choices now as a crisis has shown the fragility of the european situation because as we've built i'm sure. i've met a few of the lobbyists of multinationals in brussels as regards salary increases what do you think they would think of your report on extreme poverty there are many actors who sure change because it benefit from the current system and obviously the corporations that are best equipped to organize production across different jurisdictions and just you have to raise issues compete with one another. on the simple prescience for best at avoiding taxes limiting their tax liability by

declaring profits interests issues that have the lowest corporate income tax rates and unfortunately the big players have a major influence in setting the eba it's going to gender and in influencing critical decision making so part of the response to the crisis is true and be aware of these easy to points that these powerful actors control and to overcome them or circumvent it i think it's really important that you have them and if they haven't they have been overcome and the report talks about generational as we talk about generational poverty we're talking about more than one in 5 now at risk what is the limiting factor here obviously there was a limiting factor here in britain when the british people had enough of the lack of democracy the lack of openness as far as breaks and tears and those who voted bracks and fell what is a limiting factor here for other countries i know countries in the euro or previously tried to effect change and to no avail but do you believe this will lead

to other countries seeking to leave just just because of social instability and civil disobedience. no i don't think so and in fact we do not see in other countries. the parties that are that had proposed to leave that you gaining any. any voices as a result of the current crisis when there is is a rethinking of how the e.u. is developing but i mean what what evidence do you have that there are voices within the european union over the angle of merkel now leaving and even more neo liberal voices arguably in but then may emerge what what evidence have you got that people are taking on board your suggestions and your. issues in your report seriously at all well there is a rethinking on graeme about which is called the european semester process which is basically a process by which the budgets of the member states are being screened by the real

commission and member states are given recommendations as to how to improve macroeconomic policy convergence that's to be thought the stability and growth pact that is this economy street jacket it pulls on states in order to ensure that the euro the currency share is protected is also be rethought so there is now a unique opportunity to rethink choices meet back in the 1980s in 1900 that have truly been to fragile i social protection systems across the e.u. well we'll be monitoring this rethinking as you as you call it on this show i mean like we were covering the g.l.a. john protests with the thousands injured in you know a rich country like france i'm just going to finally end on the existential threat to the planet i mean anyone reading this report how on earth given the levels of poverty you describe in the e.u. cope with the migration crisis that will result from climate catastrophe in less

than a decade according to something done any studies that show that in fact migration is an opportunity that we can seize provided we. we provide those arriving in europe with proper training access to services by which they can learn the language and be and be trained for for jobs for which we need. to hire people they can be a benefit to the european economy and for the demographic reasons and for the sustainability of our pension schemes we need this younger generation of migrants to be part of the economy and it's much more fruitful to have been revived and be well integrated by providing the services they need to the access to education and jobs we'll tell you think you think you might be yeah you might be sorry to interrupt you think it might be possible and i should say the pension schemes are often invested in the fossil fuel companies that the credit there with climate change well what i was

referring to is the fact that we are an aging population in europe and that the arrival of younger migrants who for the most part to will join the active population can be beneficial to in the short term certainly to the european economy and we should welcome this isn't unity we should see this as not only an ethical duty to welcome those a feeling of persecution or of conflicts in in other countries but be sure to see that if they are well integrated age and even beneficial to the european economy and i really don't think it's a threat to your didn't i didn't see your or that said it's it's a wave of migrants we cannot cope with and we are not welcome here much fewer my friends than countries such as lebanon for example or turkey yeah of course i believe the culture wars of the one of just finally one quick one universal basic income you think any chance there's any chance of that being installed in your

liberal european union when it comes to extreme poverty where the crisis has led to a few countries to improve their minimum income schemes. and countries such as spain for example has for the 1st time adopted such a unify this team across the country so there is a debate going on i believe it's particularly going to be a priority for those 8 between 18 and 20 trying to use old need to be supportive as they seek to study as they search for their 1st. professional opportunities we need to support them to make sure that their choices are not constrained by being in in material in deep in this regard i regret for example that in france we have a. seat at g. which is a minimum income scheme that does not benefit the young generation between 18 and 25 years of age that is exactly the opposite of what we should do we should support

particularly that group of the procreation and i believe a universal income scheme for that group at least would be highly beneficial. thank you that's it for the show we'll be back on monday and the other side after our interview with iconic palestinian leader khaled mashal he and a look at both michael moore he's a potential climate catastrophe after the 1st couple of weeks of the biden ministration leave i stand in front of 2020 democratic presidential candidate bernie sanders until then join me i'm going to twitter facebook instagram telegram and sound cloud and don't forget to subscribe to the channel on you tube and click the bell icon to turn notifications on for you know investment. that are going to that i have done out there and i am not out of that now that the . head of the matter the money that they are planning to me.

this was a good time to. try to move their island out. that wasn't good enough why not. why all the people we believe just a little bit here. bottom of i can say what the bible said johnny borrell the moment i thought of mother how do all the kids over there what a lot of them i'm a little white could not be older let's put out the pink i don't want to put out the other one which party or the role of the mother while they're. welcome to maximize their financial survival guide. looking forward to a year without. yanks this is what happens to pensions in

britain. you watched as a report. head on to marty more vaccine woes for europe at this time is the french president who was criticised for failing to secure a french vaccine head of the u.k. as his country struggles to secure supplies it is a shame for us we have missed a good chance in france it's a little bit weird that the priority is given to the united kingdom england is better managed because it has been liberated from the european union while the government and hero are failing at everything desperate times call for desperate measures the mare's in the tally in time issues in order banning residents from getting sick draw attention to the fact they don't have a doctor. i did it as a provocation on my ruling can hardly be enforced i mean that getting sick are not .