European Elections 2024

A social Europe championing solidarity and global justice

Ahead of the European Parliamentary (EP) elections in 2024, Caritas Europa published a memorandum to call on the candidate members of the European Parliament to give priority to five urgent matters:

1. To ensure effective, adequate and inclusive labour markets and social protection for all by carefully monitoring the successful implementation of all 20 principles in the European Pillar of Social Rights and calling in particular on the European Commission to present a proposal for a framework directive on minimum income standards within the next mandate of the EP.
2. To guarantee high-quality, accessible and affordable social services for all by calling on the European Commission to present a proposal for a “golden rule” for social investment and for the creation of an enabling framework for not-for-profit service providers.
3. To defend, promote and design migration and asylum policies that respect EU values, the UN Refugee Convention, human rights and the dignity of all people without distinction.
4. To promote locally led humanitarian action and development in the EU’s external actions and significantly increase direct humanitarian and development funding to local grassroots civil society organisations, paying particular attention to the overhead costs borne by these actors.
5. To promote global justice and policy coherence for sustainable development in the global South by redressing power imbalances and structural obstacles to poverty and inequalities reduction, such as fair food systems, loss and damage and climate financing.

Caritas Europa conveys these messages to the political groups represented in the EP in order to ensure that they are taken into account in their manifestos. Achieving real progress in these areas is essential in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 and it will show the added value of the EU to its citizens and Member States.