In 2024, the poverty picture in Europe remains unchanged, but behind the stability of the overall poverty rate – namely 16.2% of the EU population, equivalent to 72.1 million people, as shown by Eurostat – there is a huge gap in Europe. The statistics office reiterated that the share is “exactly the same as in 2023”, but the territorial differences show a continent where some regions are thriving while others are increasingly marginalized. Topping the list of most vulnerable areas is French Guiana, where “more than half (53.3%) of the population is at risk of poverty”, followed by Ciudad de Melilla, in Spain, with 41.4%. Soon after, the first continental region appeared: Calabria, which with 37.2% ranked third to last in the entire Union. The southern region leads the dismal national rankings: behind it are Campania (35.5%), Sicily (35.3%) and Puglia (30.9%), followed by Sardinia, Molise, Basilicata and Lazio. On the other hand, Italy also shows some of the most solid realities in Europe: the autonomous province of Bolzano, at 5.9%, is one of the three regions with the lowest rate ever, behind Bucharest-Ilfov, in Romania, which is at 3.7%, and East Flanders in Belgium, at 5.4%. Trento reached 6.9%, while Emilia-Romagna closed at 7.3%. A clear polarization, which emphasizes the structural distance between Northern and Southern Italy.
Codacon intervened precisely on this divide, calling the Peninsula “literally split in two on an economic level”. The association underlines how “the Southern Italian region continues to lag behind Europe in terms of wealth, income and consumption”. In Calabria, the association added, it is not only the high number of citizens at risk of poverty that is a heavy burden, but also the average income which “reaches 16.
200 euros per year per inhabitant, 48% less than those living in the autonomous province of Bolzano”, where the average is 31,400 euros. The South also suffers on the consumption side: Campania records a consumption rate that is “almost half that of the Aosta Valley”, with 15,200 euros per capita.
