Minimum income initiatives helping the EU's most vulnerable households

The city of Offenbach, near Germany's major economic hub of Frankfurt on the Main, hosts a large number of migrants who sometimes face challenges to integrate into the labour market and into the local community.

One such family is the Milanovs, who migrated from Bulgaria to Germany 10 years ago. 

It’s been a decade of hardships, marked by unstable jobs, homelessness as well as language and cultural barriers. But new EU initiatives on minimum income could help improve the lives of people like the Milanovs.

In the last two years, a publicly funded social safety net has allowed the Milanov family to foresee a brighter future. The EU's minimum income scheme like the one the family benefitted from become even more effective in helping to lift Europe's most vulnerable households out of poverty and into the labour market.

"After I lost my job, I went to see the state and they helped me," said Radostin Milanov who benefits from a German minimum income scheme. "We had no place to stay, no flat. They found us a place to stay, a flat, right away. They found a place for my children at school and supported us. They also explained to us how to live in Germany."

The Milanov family is part of a pilot project, funded by the European Union, called CRIS (Cooperate, Reach out, Integrate Services). It aims to find new ways of addressing the issues faced by the most vulnerable.

"I think the CRIS project is very good," Radostina Milanova told Euronews. "They treat us, my husband and children, well and help us. When I or my children receive letters from the authorities and other institutions and don't understand them, they help us. And they are very respectful to us."

But these schemes are facing significant challenges at an EU-wide level. For Serdar