Poor relief reconfigured: from the social safety net to minimum income schemes

After lengthy preparations for their entry into the European Union, on 1 May 2004, eight former communist countries (Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) formally became new member states. Despite their common background in communism, the post-communism transition and the transformations required to meet EU entry criteria, significant differences remained between these countries. Indeed, as their integration with the EU proceeded, CEE member states continued their process of adaptation according to their own particular social demands, domestic distributive dynamics and supranational directives. Documenting the whole range of transformations that have occurred over the past ten years in the field of social inclusion policy making would go beyond the theoretical scope of this book, whose main aim is to understand the changing construction of poverty and poor relief actions over time. In this respect, it is worth noting that it is only since the early 2000s that poverty and anti-poverty programmes have been high on the agenda for post-communist welfare states. This is also as a result of the new emphasis placed by EU institutions on social inclusion in CEE countries once they had accomplished the steps of fiscal and monetary convergence required for their accession into the European economic and political space.

The new prominence placed by EU institutions on poverty and social exclusion as domains of institutional reform is of special importance for the transformation of post-communist countries. As discussed in the previous two chapters, in the absence of a proper ‘vision’ driving the construction of social assistance as a sector during the initial emergency stage of transition, the wide extension of categorical schemes (early retirement, unemployment, family and disability allowances) by and large acted as an indirect means of income support to compensate people for the widespread unemployment and poverty that ensued. On the other hand, the interventions of international actors such as the World Bank and the EU pushed for the adoption of selectivity in social assistance and family policy providing a last-resort social safety net only for the poorest.