The Social Protection and Social Inclusion Process is a European mechanism through which Member States have decided to coordinate their actions and achieve greater convergence in the field of social policy. They have accordingly committed themselves to translate agreed European common objectives into “National Strategies for Social Inclusion, Pensions and Health and Long Term Care”. New plans, which should cover the period from 2006-2008 will be submitted to the European Commission by all Member States on 15 September 2006.
Since the first set of national action plans on social inclusion in 2001, EU Member States have been constantly requested by the European Commission to adopt specific and effective measures to reach the objective of making “a decisive impact on the eradication of poverty and social exclusion” as it was agreed in the Lisbon Summit in 2000.
Even if undocumented migrants are among the most socially excluded groups in Europe today, almost no mention of their presence and marginalization has been made in the different national plans on social inclusion so far.
Certainly, some countries continue to deny undocumented migrants the access to basic social services such as health care. Others, whilst partially allowing the enjoyment of some of undocumented migrants’ fundamental human rights, show great resistance to speak openly about their social policies towards undocumented migrants on the European level. Among the countries subject to study within the PICUM project, only Spain , Belgium , the Netherlands and Germany have referred to undocumented migrants in previous reports. Yet Spain and Belgium seem to be the only EU Member States relatively open to give visibility to adopted measures aiming at facilitating access to health care for undocumented migrants.
The Social Protection and Social Inclusion Process constitutes the policy framework of a two-year project that PICUM is developing on access to health care for undocumented migrants. One of the main objectives of this EU co-financed PICUM project is precisely to target undocumented migrants into this process on the European and national levels. To this aim, a coordinated action will be taken by PICUM and its project partners in eleven Member States to make undocumented migrants’ social exclusion more visible in the next set of national reports (2008-2010). In the meantime, PICUM’s partners in Belgium and Portugal have succeeded in accessing the consultation mechanisms for the action plans on the national level. Regretfully, however, only Belgium has reacted positively to PICUM’s concerns.
PICUM expects that the main project outputs – a publication, reporting template and final conference in Brussels in June 2007 - will further contribute to fill this incomprehensive gap of the European Social Policy: the invisibility of undocumented migrants, one of the groups facing greatest risks of poverty and social exclusion in Europe.
