Menschenwürdige Mindesteinkommen von Armut betroffener Haushalte – eine Aufgabe für die EU?

In contrast to the ambitious Lisbon and Europe 2020 social targets, most EU member states have failed to make progress in fighting poverty over the past decades. Since the crisis the picture has become truly negative, even more so as it relates to strong diverging trends within the Union. We argue that the once successful subsidiarity and soft governance principles regarding social policy at the EU level have started to struggle with broader societal and economic trends. We propose to broaden the current approach by including more transparent policy indicators into EU governance. In our article, we illustrate how a broad approach and assessment of policy indicators related to minimum income protection policies helps in making explicit the large variation in policy choices across EU member states.