Ilda Figueiredo (GUE/NGL). – (PT) It is not sufficient to establish a European Year for Combating Poverty when around 20% of the European Union's population is threatened with poverty. What is happening – exacerbated by social inequalities, rising numbers of poorly paid workers with insecure jobs, thereby increasing the number of people in poverty, and rising fuel and food prices – requires other policies to ensure that children, women and families are socially included.

Measures are needed that make work more attractive, increase employment with rights and guarantee high-quality public services, decent housing and public and universal social security.

A European strategy of solidarity and social progress to replace the neoliberal policies of the Lisbon Strategy and the Stability Pact must therefore be approved as a matter of urgency so that we do not have even more poverty in 2010 than we have at the moment.