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Catholic charity Caritas warns Europe austerity cuts 'hit poor hardest'

Toll of assault on welfare and economic collapse laid bare in new report

Catholic charity Caritas has warned that Europe's tidal wave of austerity had disproportionately hit the poor.

"Five years since the crisis began there is little or no growth, continuing increases in unemployment and millions living in poverty," the Caritas Europa network said.

In Greece, despite claims the country had turned a corner, Caritas identified "a tremendous impact of increases in taxation, reductions in social benefits including pensions, higher costs due to increased indirect taxes and rising unemployment."

It reported "households that could not afford winter heating with some without electricity altogether, an unprecedented lack of access to social services, including health services and serious psychological problems with a high suicide rate."

Homelessness had risen by 25 per cent since 2009, it said.

And pensioners and people with disabilities were having to wait months for payments because of the wholesale axing of public-sector jobs.

Caritas warned that in Portugal education was worst hit, with "massive reductions in the budget" being "potentially extremely damaging."

The number of families Caritas supports in Portugal has almost doubled in recent years.

Italy, which introduced budget cuts to avoid a bailout, had seen a rise of demands for charity services of 25 per cent in 2011.

Many poor Italians rely on an EU food surplus redistribution scheme which was changed in 2013, which Caritas warned could "cause a social emergency involving over four million poor people."

Caritas concluded simply that "the policy of prioritising austerity is not working."

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