EU poverty risk at its lowest level in a decade

A decade of slow progress

The AROPE indicator (people at risk of poverty or social exclusion) combines three dimensions: income below the relative poverty threshold, severe material and social deprivation, and very low work intensity in the household. It is the headline target indicator of the European Pillar of Social Rights.

In 2025 the EU-27 rate stood at 20.9%, compared with 24.0% in 2015. Most of the progress came before 2019 (21.1%); after the pandemic the indicator stagnated between 21.0% and 21.7% and has fallen only marginally over the last two years.

East and south at the bottom of the ranking

The map of poverty risk in the EU no longer follows a strict east–west line. Bulgaria (29.0%) and Romania (27.4%) are among the most affected, but so are Greece (27.5%) and Spain (25.7%).

At the other end are three former Eastern bloc states: Czechia (11.5%), Poland (15.0%) and Slovenia (15.5%), below richer economies such as Germany (21.2%) or France (20.8%).

The gap between the extremes is considerable: in Bulgaria the risk of poverty or social exclusion is 2.5 times higher than in Czechia.

Romania: the fastest progress, but still a wide gap

No member state has reduced the risk of poverty or social exclusion as much as Romania over the past decade: from 44.5% in 2015 to 27.4% in 2025, a fall of 17.1 percentage points. Bulgaria follows, with a reduction of 14.3 pp (from 43.3% to 29.0%).

A significant part of Romania's progress occurred in a single year: from 32.0% in 2023 to 27.9% in 2024. Jumps of this size should be interpreted with caution and checked against any survey revisions.

Even so, the gap with the EU average remains 6.5 percentage points. Poland, often compared with Romania in terms of economic dynamics, fell from 22.5% to 15.0% over the same period, suggesting that income levels alone do not explain poverty risk; distribution, employment and social transfers also matter.

Implications for Moldova

The Republic of Moldova is not yet included in Eurostat's AROPE series, and the absolute poverty rate calculated by NBS (31.1% in 2025) uses a different methodology and cannot be compared directly with the European indicator.

As a candidate country, Moldova will need to produce harmonised indicators through the EU-SILC survey. Adopting this methodology early would allow credible comparisons and make the real gap with member states visible.

The experience of Poland and Czechia shows that poverty risk can fall faster than income convergence when employment and social protection policies are well targeted.

Sources

• Eurostat
• National Bureau of Statistics of Moldova (NBS), statistical database