Will a Guaranteed Minimum Income be introduced in any EU country before 2041?

A Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) is a guaranteed minimum income above the poverty line that would be guaranteed to be paid to any person of age.

Features of a GMI would be: unconditional, automatic, non-withdrawable, individual, and as a right. This doesn’t mean every person would receive that income, but the vast majority of the population of a country, region, or locale would be guaranteed a minimum income, no strings attached.

The implementation can and would vary from state to state, according to the respective cultural, societal, and governmental conditions.

So far there have been numerous experiments with UBI in the US, Finland, Canada, Netherlands, and other countries, and UBI has become a recurring theme in political and public discussion since the 1980s, in particular in light of downsizing due to automation. Groups call for the implementation of a basic income to deal with these issues.

But there are also arguments against implementing a UBI, such as questioning the financing strategy, a rise in shadow economy, the negative effect on people depending on more personalised (and higher) welfare, decrease in motivation to work, and so on.