According to figures publish by the European Union’s statistics office Romania’s citizens were at greatest risk of material deprivation last year (24.5%, or almost one in every four Romanians), followed by Latvia (22.5%), Lithuania (22.2%), Spain (22,1%), Bulgaria (22.1%), Estonia (21.6%), Greec (21.4%), Italy (19.9%) and Portugal (19.5%).

Compared to 2008, before the financial crisis, the risk of material deprivation has increased in Portugal by one percentage point.

According to Eurostat, which published its figures on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, the rates fell in 2015 to close to pre-crisis levels.

In terms of social exclusion, over a third of the population was at risk of poverty in Bulgaria (41.3%), in Romania (37.3%) and in Greece (37.3%), whilst in Portugal in 2015 the rate was over a quarter (26.6%).

The EU member states with the lowest levels of social exclusion were the Czech Republic (14%), Sweden (16%), the Netherlands and Finland (16.8% each), Denmark and France (17.7% each).

According to a study published in September by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, entitled “Unequal Portugal,” the number of people in Portugal living below the poverty line increased between 2009 and 2014, by 116,000 to 2.02 million.

A quarter of children and 10.7% of workers live below the poverty line.