Elisabeth Schroedter’s opening words were followed by a moving appeal by Caritas Europa’s President, Father Erny Gillen. ‘Open your eyes and look at poverty’, he told the audience. ‘Open your ears and listen to the voices of poor people. Open your heart and meet people. Open your mind and understand that we are all human persons’. Father Gillen then gave a speech forcefully arguing that the emphasis on fighting rather than preventing poverty is wrong – for moral reasons as it removes people’s dignity, for practical reasons as it is inefficient. The key to eradicating poverty, said Father Gillen, was preventing it from occurring in the first place through investment in people.

This set the scene for a lively discussion, in which MEPs were keen to talk about their own personal interpretation of the phrase ‘Zero Poverty’. For Sylvia Costa, the most important aspect of the campaign was its emphasis on eradicating child poverty – a theme which was prominent in the contributions of Ilda Figueiredo and Kinga Göncz as well. For Patrizia Toia, what attracted her to the campaign was the emphasis on ‘zero’ poverty – i.e. the uncompromising belief that poverty is an injustice. Charles Bach and Nessa Childers on the other hand chose to focus on the social element of fighting poverty – for them growing inequality was a problem, not least because it loosens the ties that should bind a society. Marian Harkin was attracted by Caritas's definition of social welfare and the various proposals put forward to strengthen it.