Poverty and Income Inequality - Impacts of the EU-enlargement on social unprivileged population groups in the EU-15 Countries

The aim of this paper is to discuss two particular problems in the context of the EU-enlargement. These problems are poverty and inequality of income distribution. Usually when people talk about these issues they primarily think about the prospective member stats. We are not going to discuss the situation within the new member countries. The purpose of this paper is to change the perspective and focus on poverty an income inequality in "old" EU-15 countries. More precisely, the focus is upon analysing the influence of the enlargement on the old EU 15 countries.
This work is divided in two parts. Firstly, we go through some definitions and discuss more in general the poverty situation in the EU 15 countries. Secondly, we pick up one member state of the EU 15 countries and go a little bit deeper into the topic. The case study will focus up on unemployment within Germany and discuss impacts of the enlargement on social unprivileged groups in different geographical areas of Germany. Within the last step we try to draw out some conclusions of the unemployment structure in Germany and get the connection to the poverty situation in Germany