At risk of poverty or social exclusion (AROPE)

Romania remains in the small group at the bottom of the Union, even as the share falls year after year. The distance to the European average has narrowed, but not closed.

Bulgaria is the only neighbour with a comparable share. Poland has fallen spectacularly over the last decade, well below the European average, and Hungary too has dropped under that average: the comparison shows how far Romania still has to go even next to its closest peers.

Poverty has a geography: in Bucharest-Ilfov the share is at Western European levels, while in the eastern and southern regions the risk is several times higher than in the capital. The national decline has not erased this divide.