HARVATSKA NA RUBU GLADI

FEAR OF AUTUMN Croats facing the abyss of poverty: Globus brings alarming results from a study by a reputable institute As many as 70 percent of citizens do not have enough money in their account to be able to survive for two months if they lose their job Writes: Boris OrešićPosted: August 11, 2020 5:33 pm 8453701 Josko Ponos / Cropix Facebook Twitter Messenger E-mail RELATED NEWS Bank (illustration) SHOCKING ASSESSMENT The crown will be more deadly for the banks, more precisely the loans they gave, than the black plague FIGHTING THE VIRUS Đikić: The vaccine must be harmless and effective. I am working on a drug for coronavirus 2 and 3 Millions of citizens of the European Union cannot survive even two months without income, so without the help of the state they would not be able to cover even basic living expenses because they do not have enough savings. Of all the EU countries, the situation is most difficult in Croatia, where 18 percent of citizens, or almost a fifth, would not have food and utilities if their monthly income was halved. In the European Union, there are on average 2 percent of them. This was shown by a study by the prestigious Bruegel Institute in Brussels entitled "Millions of Europeans Can't Endure a Two-Month Income Shock Without Generous, Targeted Government Measures" conducted by Catarina Midões and Mateo Seré in recent months . They came to the alarming conclusion that about 400,000 Croatian citizens, if they lost their monthly income, would be immediately brought to the brink of poverty, and it is not comforting that as many as 69 percent of Croatian citizens do not have savings to finance a normal life or expenses for two months. food and housing. At the level of 21 EU countries in which the survey was conducted, a quarter or 25 percent of citizens do not have enough stock in their accounts for two months of survival, and the situation is slightly worse than in Croatia only in Lithuania, where 71 percent. In Slovenia, 58 percent of citizens cannot count on savings, while in Austria or Malta there are only 10 percent of such cases. With 16 percent of citizens throwing a 50 percent drop in income into poverty, Lithuanians are only slightly better than us, while in other countries there are far fewer who are so dependent on regular incomes that come to them from month to month - in Latvia and in Slovenia 8 percent, in Greece 5 percent, and in Austria and Finland only a little more than zero percent, which would mean that the living standards of the population of these two countries would not change significantly even if their salaries fell by 50 percent for two months. The conclusion is that the inhabitants of richer European countries are far less dependent than us on state subsidies, ie money that the governments of most European countries, including Croatia, have set aside in recent months to compensate employers for losses caused by the blockade of normal operations in the first months of the epidemic. to pay their workers salaries in full or only slightly reduced. Without state aid, many companies would have no choice but to drastically cut wages and lay off their workers en masse. Researchers from the Bruegel Institute examined in detail how some European Union countries functioned socially during the general social and economic freeze caused by the pandemic, ie how people who temporarily or permanently lost their jobs and incomes survived and what was their role in rescuing them. had a state. They took into account that a large number of people lost their jobs and that many had their incomes falling significantly. The survey states that at the level of all 27 EU member states, GDP fell by 3.5 percent in the first three months of this year. The unemployment rate was 6.6 percent in March, and in April the number of employees across the EU was 400,000 lower than in March. You can read the full article in the print edition of the new issue of Globus image