Jean Lambert, on behalf of the Verts/ALE Group. – Madam President, we’re coming up to the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty on 17 October, so this is a very timely debate, and I thank my colleagues for proposing it. The minimum income scheme that we’ve been talking about in Parliament is about the last resort income so that people are not left destitute. We should also be aware in this that we’re not talking here about unemployment benefit, because not everybody is in a position to be able to work.

This is, as people have said, an ongoing problem for the European Union. It’s really disturbing to hear the Commissioner remind us about the stabilising of income inequality. Even in my own region, London, which is just about the richest region in the European Union, we have over one—in—three children who are living below the poverty line. So when we’re looking at questions about minimum income, adequacy is a key point. Many of our Member States’ systems don’t ensure adequacy; they don’t keep up with the rising cost of living; they cap systems; they have harsh criteria in many cases, and they certainly have an increasingly harsh public perception of people who are on these schemes.

When we’re looking at what else the European Union can do, we should come back to an idea that was floated some time ago by the Anti—Poverty Network, which is about putting in place a directive setting out the principles upon which minimum income schemes should be based within our Member States.