Calabria is the region with the highest income inequality in Europe. CGIL: “In addition to funds, Europe should think about employment and social policies”

John

By John

“The economic data for Calabria, processed by Eurostat, mark the most dramatic result ever recorded in the European context: our region has the greatest income inequality among all EU countries. An extremely discriminating phenomenon which not only accentuates the low growth condition in our region, but highlights a strong distribution disparity between capital and income. The European Economic Institute certifies the widening of the social gap to the advantage of the richest strata and accentuates their state of absolute poverty, in terms of value and condition. All this while our region is suffering from a demographic crisis, a depopulation of internal areas and an unprecedented youth emigration which will be exacerbated by differentiated autonomy. There is an unavoidable issue for the national and regional government: wages, work and investments which escape the orbit of any measure issued by the executive”. This is what we read in a note from the Economic Department of the CGIL Calabria.
2The 20% of rich Calabrian citizens – continues the note – increase their well-being, while the poor 20% become even more destitute as they are unable to have the basic means of subsistence on essential goods and services. A phenomenon which, although paradoxical, given the quantity and purpose of European resources, ordinary and extraordinary, that Calabria has at its disposal today, we have always tried to highlight how CGIL is in the institutional contexts of European programming, recalling an approach of direction and merit based on the quality of spending in terms of impact and congruity of results. Over half of the community spending is assigned with bonuses, incentives and tax credits which only marginally determines a reward in investments in distribution and income policies, with a low employment coefficient”. The Economic Department of the CGIL Calabria also underlines that, ” however evident, the critical factors in community spending are often conceived in the need for intervention on quantitative aspects, rather than addressing them in the complexity of their distribution dynamics to better act on contextual processes of development and both economic and social growth. In other words, there is not only a problem in the ability to invest funds to reduce territorial gaps with other areas of the country but, to do so, through targeted social and employment policies to guarantee the general well-being of all social classes residing in the territories. The Eurostat survey essentially suggests that we consider regional gaps in order to better address national ones.