In the Europe 2020 strategy the EU decided to reduce by 20 million the number of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Economic crisis and austerity policies have made it very difficult to reach this objective since the number of poor people has increased. Even though the gender gap in poverty was lowered in all member countries given the increase in male poverty, the number of women at risk of poverty and social exclusion is higher than that of men in 2015.While there are big differences among member States, EU policies hampered the reduction of poverty in most of them. Therefore it is necessary to change EU social and macroeconomic policies
