The upcoming Social Summit in Porto must deliver on concrete commitments to strengthen rights and improve living conditions. The pandemic has exposed the gradual weakening of social rights across the EU, jumpstarted by the 2008 economic crisis. The Commission and member states drove aggressive austerity cuts that damaged social services and weakened social safety nets for citizens. The near collapse of our health systems, the scarcity in medical supplies and the role played by frontline workers during the pandemic, among the most poorly paid and precarious, are stark examples of the disastrous consequences of these policies. The EU failed to meet its 2020 poverty reduction target and has enabled massive inequality with policies centring private interests, neoliberalism and the profits of multinationals over fundamental rights, in particular the social rights, of its citizens.