Social measures in Europe are insufficient to eliminate the risk of poverty amongst workers or the general population, and the situation shows major variation across member states.
The European Commission’s Social Protection Committee Annual Report 2025, published a few days ago, states that around half of member states recorded a noticeable reduction in the population at risk of poverty, but a third recorded a noticeable increase.
Unemployment benefit recipients fall
The number of unemployment benefit recipients has risen in around half of member states, particularly (in relative terms) in Austria, Croatia and the Netherlands.
The number fell in seven countries, mainly Cyprus, Estonia, Latvia and Spain, and remained broadly unchanged in three member states.
The number of social assistance benefit recipients has fallen in almost half of member states, with particularly significant drops in Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia. By contrast, increases in social assistance recipients were recorded in some countries (around a third), with particularly sharp rises in Bulgaria and Spain.
Nine countries spent more than half of their total social protection expenditure on old-age benefits, peaking at 59.2% in Italy, followed by Portugal (54.8%), Romania (53.2%) and Poland (52.7%).
In some cases, relatively high spending shares may be linked to ageing populations. Apart from Ireland, where sickness/healthcare provision was the largest category, the second-highest level of social protection spending in all countries was on sickness/healthcare provision.
Its share ranged from 45.0% in Ireland and 37.8% in Cyprus to lows of 23.1% in Finland, 22.2% in Denmark and 22.1% in Italy.
Cyprus improvements
Other measures specifically target workers in certain sectors. For example, Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Cyprus have improved the social protection regime and/or coverage for artists and other cultural sector professionals.
Poland is preparing legislation that will allow professional artists to enter the social insurance system, with public funding to support their contributions.
Regarding the self-employed, several recent measures extending formal coverage have focused on family-related leave. The right to maternity leave for self-employed women was granted by Greece and Germany, following Italy’s example in 2022.
Malta extended the right to paternity leave to the self-employed.
Other significant reforms include extending benefits related to work accidents and occupational diseases to the self-employed in Cyprus and to self-employed platform workers in Belgium, where platforms must insure them for workplace accidents.
Finally, some measures announced in the past, particularly under Recovery and Resilience Plans, have been delayed.
For example, Cyprus decided not to extend unemployment benefits to the self-employed at this stage, whilst Poland has not yet adopted its planned reform to provide comprehensive social protection to all workers subject to civil law contracts.
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