Summary
With poverty and increasing inequalities persistently undermining
human dignity, most European countries are struggling to ensure
a decent standard of living for all. Basic, or citizenship, income
is a form of social security that can provide each citizen with
a regular sum of money to live on. Defined as universal, individual, unconditional
and sufficient to ensure living in dignity and participation in
society, it would help relieve absolute poverty whilst removing
disincentives to work. It could supplement earnings for those engaged
in non-standard forms of work and job-sharing, and the underemployed.
Introducing a basic income could guarantee equal opportunities
for all more effectively than the existing patchwork of social benefits,
services and programmes. However, given the practical difficulties
of such a radical change in social policy, an in-depth debate is
necessary in each country to determine the modalities for such a
permanently guaranteed income and the ways of funding it as part
of a new social contract between citizens and the State. The report
therefore puts forward a series of recommendations to member States,
inviting them to study the past and present initiatives of field-testing
basic income at all levels and enhance support to vulnerable categories
of the population
