Geneva - Europe's middle-classes are among the groups who previously did not require humanitarian assistance but are now turning to the Red Cross for help, a study released Monday said. The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies attributed the emergence of new vulnerable groups to the global economic downturn.
The federation said that some two-thirds national societies surveyed across the European Union were now distributing food, "which has not been commonly carried out in recent times."
Many people who took out loans cannot pay them back, families were losing their homes and others simply could not pay for food with unemployment on the rise.
In Spain, some 500,000 people were receiving food handouts from the national Red Cross, a number that did not include asylum-seekers, refugees and other, more typically vulnerable groups.
"Winter is coming and with this things get much worse. Costs rise in the winter," said Georg Habsburg, the president of the Hungarian Red Cross Society.
"People are faced with serious troubles," he told reporters in Geneva.
Governments need to be aware of the social impact of the recession when formulating policy and expand social welfare programmes, the organization said.
"Governments need to take adequate steps to tackle the crisis," said Habsburg.
The federation warned that without such intervention there was a chance of increasing social tensions, as people's needs were on the rise but resources were in decline.
