Close gap or prepare for social chaos - EU report on social inequity

Any country, especially one as rich as this, where the capital’s city council is “seriously looking” at building prefabs on derelict sites to house homeless families probably does not need an outside agency to warn it that destructive and dangerous social inequity is growing.

Nevertheless, the EU’s First Social Justice Index, which compares social conditions and fairness in all 28 EU states, reported yesterday that we have, under nearly all of the headings considered, fallen too far down the community’s social justice league. We have joined the impoverished and struggling member states, mostly the southern or eastern countries, rather than the more advanced and organised societies of northern Europe.

The index records an ever-widening gap between rich and poor, a gap that the report’s authors say cannot be justified by our economic difficulties. So startling are the findings that the authors warned that surging poverty rates in the community’s crisis-hit economies — including this one — represent a growing threat to the stability and future of the European Union. The highly regarded German authors warned particularly that poor pay, unemployment, and the absence of opportunity are having a profound and alienating impact on millions of Europe’s young people.