Europe’s poor people, starving to death

There is an initiative that needs our attention. It is the campaign conducted by Italy, together with a number of Third Sector associations, aiming at guaranteeing the survival of the European food aid programme for the most deprived. Since 1987 such a programme, indeed, has supported charitable trusts in twenty EU countries, providing them with food to be distributed to the needy. Even if, because of the crisis, there is a general increase in the poverty level in Europe, within the EU institutions we see the development of a strong debate for avoiding the reduction of the funds allocated to such a basic assistance instrument.

The programme has to face a number of challenges at the economic, political and legal level. Above all, it has to deal with a contrast between a well-trained minority of six countries headed by Germany (with Sweden, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and Czech Republic), which want to support the plan only through the surplus products of the European agriculture (whose quantity is increasingly lower), and the vast majority of the countries participating in the programme (included Italy, France and Poland), which, by contrast, want to support it with a small amount of money deriving from the funds allocated to the CAP (Common Agricultural Policy).

It is superfluous to highlight that the countries wanting to reduce the contribution to the programme are those who benefit the least from it, because their welfare systems are well organized and imply mechanisms supporting the needy that are managed directly by the State or charitable institutions. What these countries (supported also by the European Court) claim is that the funds for the programme should not derive from the Agricultural Policy, but rather from the EU funds for social activities. However, this “coherence” might kill the principle of solidarity and leave this precious instrument for European social cohesion, which is one of the main goals of the EU, without economic resources.

The Commission has been evaluating a new Regulation that would give the programme the opportunity of being supported both through the surplus food produced by EU countries (as happened for years) and through the direct purchase of the necessary products from the free market. Ironically, indeed, the higher volatility of food price has, on the one hand, reduced the quantity of surplus stock and, on the other, endangered the food security of poor people, increasing the price of products on the market. Up to now, the six countries have been able to stop, with their veto, the approval of such a Regulation and the European food aid programme for the most deprived has already seen its budget reduced from 500 million to only 113 million (a cut equal to 77,4%).

Regulation

Court of Justice judgement 13-4-2011