(Brussels) Given that “a quarter of the population is still exposed to the risk of poverty and social exclusion”, the European Bishops call “the EU and its member states to develop an integral approach to fighting poverty and social exclusion in all their forms, in conjunction with the social and ecclesiastic institutions”. This is written in a document published by the Commission of the EU Bishops Conferences (Comece) and addressed to the president of the EU Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, to Social Affairs Commissioner Marianne Thyssen, to the MEPs and to the next Maltese presidency of the EU Cabinet. The problem of poverty has moved “from the suburbs to the heart of our societies” and is now gripping children, young people, the long-term unemployed, the “working poor”, discriminated social groups. “The more vulnerable ones should be at the centre of local, national and European policies”, says the text, led by the principles of “solidarity and subsidiarity”. In an interdependent global economy, national governments too “should cooperate, at least on a European scale, in their social and tax laws and policies”. If poverty is “the result of structural obstacles”, only the “social market economy”, which relates “the free trade principle to the need for solidarity and the mechanisms that serve the common good”, is a model that takes an “integral approach to fighting poverty”.