The EU statistics bureau Eurostat released a report on poverty in the bloc, showing a decline in the share of persons at risk of poverty across the EU. However, the report said that in Croatia 27.9 percent of the population live on the verge of poverty or social exclusion.

The report was released on Tuesday, a day before the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, observed on October 17.

In the EU, six member countries have a higher percentage of population at risk of poverty than Croatia, where 1.2 million people live on the brink of poverty. As many as 21 EU countries fared better than Croatia.

“In 2017, 112.9 million people, or 22.5 percent of the total population in the European Union were at risk of poverty or social exclusion,” said Eurostat.

The figure includes people experiencing at least one of the following three conditions: risk of poverty after social transfers (income poverty), severely material deprivation, or living in households with very low work intensity.

“After three consecutive increases in the proportion of persons at risk of poverty or social exclusion in the EU from 2009 to 2012 when it reached almost 25 percent, it has since continuously decreased to reach 22.5 percent last year,” the report said.

In 2017, nearly 20 percent of Croatians were at risk of poverty after social transfers, whereas an estimated 10.3 percent could not afford four out of nine essential necessities such as paying for utility bills or any unexpected expenses, or did not posses a car or a TV set, eating food poor in proteins, or they were unable to take a week-long holiday away from home.

“Looking at low work intensity, 9.3 percent of the population aged 59 or younger in the EU lived in households where adults worked less than 20 percent of their total work potential during the past year,” Eurostat said.

“This proportion has decreased significantly compared with 2016, when it was at 10.5 percent, and is close to the 2008 level, which was 9.2 percent. Ireland (18.2% in 2016), Greece (15.6%), Belgium (13.5%), Croatia (13.0% in 2016), Spain (12.8%), and Italy (11.8%) had the highest proportions of those living in very low work intensity households, while Slovakia (5.4%), the Czech Republic (5.5%), Poland (5.7%), Estonia (5.8%) and Slovenia (6.2%) had the lowest.”

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