Following the vote by the European Parliament’s Social Affairs Committee on Monday (21 May 2013) rejecting the Commission’s proposal for one billion cut to the Fund for the 2014-2020 European Aid to the Most Deprived, EPHA applauds the Committee’s move whilst asking to re-consider its take on health and nutritional value of the food aid provision to the EU’s poor.
The new 2014-2020 programme is intended to replace the Food Distribution Programme designed to re-distribute food surpluses produced under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which comes to an end in 2013. The scope of this new fund will be broadened to provide additional assistance like a provision of essential goods to the EU’s most deprived, putting a particular emphasis on homeless and children.
At its extraordinary meeting in Strasbourg on 20 May 2013, the majority of the MEPs of the Social Affairs Committee voted to keep the budget for this new programme at the current level of 3.5 billion euro, instead of cutting it to 2.5 billion euro as proposed by the Commission under its EU’s cohesion budget in the MAFF for 2014-2020. The draft report by MEP Emer Costello‘s (S&D, IE) received huge interest with 454 amendments proposed on a “Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived”.
EPHA welcomes the Committee’s proposal to increase the co-financing rate of the programme for the countries hit the hardest by the current economic crisis to 95%, although an even more ambitious goal of 100% coverage for certain recession-driven EU Member States would be advisable.
Although schemes like this make a difference for millions of children, disadvantage families, elderly, homeless and unemployed across the EU, emergency food aid is not and should not be seen as a sustainable answer to food and nutrition poverty. Food and nutrition insecurity is a political issue and therefore should be tackled with political solutions – beyond ‘just’ emergency aid provision. What we need are solutions that improve access to healthy foods for Europe’s poor, improved nutritional profile of foods, fight against diet-related non-communicable disease and health inequalities reduction, whilst addressing long-term shortcomings.
The health outcomes of the deprived – especially those related to diets – have hit rock bottom. People of low socio-economic status need better, more accessible and affordable food available to them in a sustainable way – not just emergency food of high energy and fat value, as the programme is set to provide – if accepted in this form according to the proposal.
EPHA believes the fund, and most importantly, its beneficiaries, can significantly gain from inclusion of agricultural products of proven health benefits such as fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and legumes – products currently missing from the scheme’s proposal. This of course requires building bridges between social, agriculture and health stakeholders and policies.
EPHA is also concerned that this scheme could displace other overarching solutions to poverty that address the underlying causes of poverty in a more sustainable fashion, and that the proposal’s language falls short of the urgency and grave of the current situation.
– Next steps:
The European Parliament’s mandate for negotiations with the Council will be decided by the plenary, most probably at its June session.
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