Measures taken to counter price hike in food

First measure : Commission to expand food programme

As an immediate action addressing the population that has been hardest hit, the Commission amended the Food Programme scheme effective from September 2009. The former scheme, based on a food stockpile distributed to the most deprived groups in a given population, was considered inadequate, particularly in light of the recent rise in food prices and the negative impact this has had on poorer people.

A suggested initiative was to increase the Community budget dedicated to food aid to 500 million as of 2009.

The revised terms implied :

 Co- financing between Member States and European Commission - if the two sources of supply, intervention stocks or market purchased food, run out, co-financing will provide further food supplies;
 A wider variety of food - so far, only some products are available through food aid. The proposal specifies that products would be chosen by Member States on national criteria;
 A long-term perspective - the programme will last three years. Member States willing to take part in the project must find a suitable partner to organise the food distribution and submit their request to the Commission ;
 A reinforced monitoring and reporting process.

Second measure : Commission’s action on prices

To compliment the first action, the Commission proposed a communication to improve the functioning of the food supply chain in Europe in order to decrease prices. The idea is to call Member States to pay attention to practices that go against competition rules and undermine consumer protection in food policy.

The Communication on Food Prices in the European Union puts emphasis on market regulation in order to allow citizens to benefit from affordable food and control levels of non-compliance with regard to legislation.

The communication highlights the need to:

 promote the competitiveness of the food-supply chain ;
 think of ways to ensure the stability of the market to discourage a volatile market;
 increase the monitoring of prices in order to keep consumers up-to-date on the evolution of the market ;
 review EU and national regulations and practices that are contrary to competition rules.

EPHA Comments

Although Europe is one of the world’s richest areas, there is a huge contradiction in that 43 million Europeans are at risk of food poverty. It is regrettable that the reporting and the monitoring done so far has not exposed management failures. Hopes are that a reinforced monitoring process will make it easier to adjust flaws of the market. It is of primary importance that these schemes provide healthy and nutritious food aid. If this is managed by the Member States themselves, the Commission should provide guidelines with input from DG SANCO on how to ensure a healthy food basket for those who really need it.

For further information :

 DG Agriculture and Rural Development
 Free food for Europe’s poor
 Communication on Food Prices