Critical explorations on the constitutional protection of decent living under the influence of poverty statistics

The protection of decent living is, since 2019, a constitutional obligation in the Greek legal order. The new constitutional provision which followed the constitutional amendment made the term decent living a legal term. Based on this development the question that arises is if it is still possible for the legislature and the courts to use the results of statistics of poverty as empirical data for the protection of decent living, given that poverty statistics quantify the term poverty, a term with different content comparing with the term decent living. The study aims to demonstrate the implications of the use of poverty statistics to the quality and effectiveness of protection of decent living and to propose new ways for the implementation of social statistics to judicial control for the protection of decent living. The main argument is that protection of socio-economic rights must follow the example of the environmental protection as far as the impact to decent living status is concerned.