Social Inclusion in European Union Countries – Halfway Reflection on the Europe 2020 Strategy

Abstract

One of the current ambitions of the European Union (EU) policy is to promote inclusive growth in all Member States (MS). After the crisis, over the last few years the EU and its MS have made a series of important decisions that put stronger emphasis on social aspects. The aim of the research was to discuss effectiveness of the current European policy in the field of poverty and social exclusion on a basis of statistics concerning mentioned phenomena. The discussion is signif-icant, because it takes places five years after the Europe 2020 strategy introduction. One of the priorities of the strategy is inclusive growth. The paper explains the most important issues concerning inequalities, poverty and social inclusion as well as their impact on an economy, describes the attitude toward social protection common in the EU and presents the chosen aspects the of Europe 2020 strategy concerning the fight against social exclusion. Then the paper juxtaposes those issues with statistical data, what lets question the efficiency of the EU policy. Some other probable reasons of unsatisfactory results are also discussed. On a basis of EU documents there are also presented some recommendations for the MS. There are focused mainly on labour market and education.