Strasbourg, 22.05.2012 – Adopting a report on “Austerity measures – a danger for democracy and social rights”, prepared by Andrej Hunko (Germany, UEL), the PACE Committee on Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development said it was concerned that the restrictive approaches currently pursued may not reach their objective of consolidating budgets, but risk further deepening the crisis and undermining the social rights as they mainly affect lower income classes and the most vulnerable categories of the population.

It therefore recommends a profound re-orientation of current austerity programmes, ending their quasi-exclusive focus on expenditure cuts in social areas such as pensions, health services or family benefits. The European social model and its various national expressions should be protected as a common European vision and the welfare state should be further strengthened, the committee said. (more...)

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