EUROPE

By Laura Desilles

April 30, 2013

Negotiating the new EU Food Aid Programme

BRUSSELS he European Commission has agreed last week to push back the vote to approve the draft legislation for the Fund for European Aid for the Most Deprived (FEAD). The vote was originally set up to take place on April 22-23 but was rescheduled to May 7 due to a number of compromised amendments which still have to be discussed between MEPs, stakeholders and members states. The calls from MEPs to delay the vote and further the discussions seem to indicate a sign of complicated negotiations ahead. The Fund for European Aid for the Most Deprived was proposed by Commissioner Laslo Andor in October 2012. The fund succeeds the current EU Fund Aid Programme which makes agricultural surplus available as food aid, but expands the scope to include other essential goods such as clothing and hygiene products. Commissioner Andor said the fund would demonstrate Europes solidarity with those who have been worst affected by the current economic crisis. The Fund will help the people, mostly women and children, who suffer from food and material deprivation. At the moment, an envelope of 2.5 billion has been allocated to the programme which will be part of Europe 2020 strategy to reduce by 20 million the number of people suffering from poverty by 2020. Several factors are behind the creation of the new European Fund. The current European Programme of Food Aid for the Most Deprived Persons (MDP), which was set up in 1987, was the only European programme that reached directly out to people living on the margins and suffering from social exclusion. It had become an important support for NGOs and charities across Europe. While the programme has been a successful model for years of food redistribution, the decrease in agriculture surplus has forced the European Commission to rethink its Food Aid scheme. The changing face of poverty in the EU has also forced a number of NGOs and charities to ask Europe to broaden the scope of its Food Aid Programme to material aid in order to help the increasing number of people suffering from material deprivation. Earlier this year, Eurostat published a study which revealed that 40 million Europeans are suffering from consistent poverty, and 116 million are at risk of poverty. In Ireland, children are suffering the most from material deprivation. The study revealed that 31.8% of Irish children suffer from two or more forms of deprivation. The FEAD was set up to answer these urgent needs and provide basic material needs clothing, shoes, hygiene products, school material and to continue providing food to the most deprived in Europe. The current economic crisis has worsened the situation. Commissioner Andor has urged the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers to approve the fund as soon as possible so that Europe is ready to demonstrate its renewed solidarity with the most deprived from 2014. While NGOs, member states and MEPs have welcomed the Fund which will improve the lives of thousands of deprived people in Europe, a number of voices have raised concerns on the content of the 34 compromised amendments. Last week, European Parliaments rapporteur MEP Emer Costello addressed her draft report to the Commission for Social Affairs and Employment. The rapporteur has voiced the concerns of MEPs, stakeholders and NGOs at the meeting. The 2.5 billion envelope The amount allocated to the fund was the primary concern raised by the member states, the aid organisations and the MEPs. The envelope of 360 million per year is a significant decrease compared to the current Food Aid Programme which received 500 million in 2012. Emer Costello highlighted that with this amount, the fund will only help 2 million people in Europe, representing only a fraction of a deprived population. This envelope contradicts and endangers the Europe 2020 strategy to reduce by 20 million the number of people in poverty by 2020. Some MEPs highlighted the fact that this does not reflect Europe core values of solidarity and cohesion. A number of MEPs are now asking for an increase of at least 1 billion euro for the seven year period. This proposal is now under the scrutiny of the European Commission and will be discussed this week.

The FEAD expands the EU Aid for to help materialdeprived people in the EU and will provide hygiene products, clothing, toys, or clothes.

Co-financing by member states The current proposal stipulates that the Fund will be financed at 85% by the European Social Fund (ESF). While the ESF is key in the Europe 2020 strategy by helping social integration through schemes to reintegrate people in the labour market, MEP Morin-Chartier, along with other MEPs, has argued that the Fund needs to be 100% financed by Europe to insure that people benefiting from ESF programmes will not see their aid compromised by a redistribution in the budget for the FEAD. So this will mean that were giving to the poor with one hand and taking it back with the other, MEP Morin-Chartier said at the European Parliament last February. The Commission proposal also requires member states or local authorities to cofinance FEAD programmes by providing 15% of the funding. This proposal is strongly criticised by a number of MEPs who do not see how member states who are under pressure to cut public expenditure costs and hardly hit by the crisis would be able to finance the FEAD programme. Mandatory Participation While Emer Costello and Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs Pervenche Beres stressed the importance of having a united European voice to fight poverty and social exclusion, MEPs and member states have raised concerns on the mandatory participation paradigm, forcing member states to participate to the program. Pervenche Beres pointed out that it was in the interests of all the member states to participate in this European fund. Today, 20 member states, including Ireland, are currently participating in the Programme of European Food Aid which helps 19 million people every day. Ireland will receive 2.5 million worth of food for the year 2013 which doubles its amount from last year. However, member states have argued that obliging member states to participate in the programme might lead to spread out the decreased funds more thinly and include countries that do not currently benefit from EU food aid and potentially would not wish to (for different reasons, e.g. already existing independent sturctures). The fears are that those that now depend on the programme will be severely cut if the proposal for this fund remains as it is., said Marije Cornelissen from the Commission for Womens Rights and Gender Equality earlier this month. Countries such as Germany, the UK, the Netherlands and Denmark, who do not take part currently in the EU Food Aid Programme, do not wish participate to the new Fund. They disapprove the proposal for a mandatory participation on the grounds of the subsidiary principle. According to the European Commissions ground rules, the European Commissions proposals must be grounded in the European interest and respect the principles of subsidiarity (in domains where the EU does not have exclusive competence to act). In other words, the subsidiary principle provides that, in policy areas which do not fall within the only competence of the European Union, but where competence is shared by member states, the Union can act only and insofar as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member State. UK Minister for Work and Pensions Mr. Hoban said in December that the European Commission had not provided enough justification for a EU-wide action, arguing that the policy could be sufficiently achieved by the states on their own. It seems that the challenge for MEPs in favour of the FEAD will be to prove that the objectives and the goals of the Fund cannot be achieved by the Member States alone and that the action will be better implemented as part of an EU-wide scale aid. A Top-up program At the European Commission last week, many MEPs stressed the fact that the FEAD has been set up as an accompanying programme which aims at complementing national policies currently in place in member states to fight poverty. While the fund should be welcomed as an instrument and an emergency tool to help distressed people and families across Europe, it is not combatting poverty at the source and therefore will not resolve poverty on its own. It is though a crucial support which can be used by member states in addition to national and EU policies to fight unemployment. Labour Minister for

Social Protection Joan Burton commented last week that the strongest protection against poverty is decent, secured and fairly paid jobs. It is vital that the FEAD aims eventually at enabling people to progress to other national or EU schemes which fight social exclusion and bring people back in the labour market. Decrease Dependency, Increase Independency In order for Europe to make the most use of its new fund and reach its Europe 2020 target, Europe must look at how the fund can fight poverty by working with national employment schemes but also by helping and empowering aid organisations at national-level across Europe. The real challenge for the FEAD is to decrease the dependency of local and national aid organisations on EU Food Aid and help them become more independent. How can this be achieved? Many existing aid organisations are not dependent on EU Food Aid. A number of food banks work without public support by making use of food offered by local food chains. MEP Emer Costello pointed out that 1/3 of all food grown is wasted. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimated that Ireland produces one million of food waste each year, comprising 500,000 tonnes of agricultural surplus with the remaining tonnes split evenly between commercial and household waste. Therefore, instead of producing more food, it should be made possible for organisations to make more use of the food that would be otherwise thrown away, within the limits of food safety and hygiene. NGOs, charities and food banks should be able to build and enhance their relationships with food producers, shops, restaurants, and manufacturers, etc. For that to be achievable, aid organisations need logistic help such as transport, ICT facilities and public awareness campaigns to attract donors. The fund could serve as both a resource and a support for aid organisations to build relationships within the food industry and provide them with the material and facilities necessary to achieve this. This would help to reduce food waste in Europe and decrease the dependency on EU food aid instead of enhancing it. Material and basic necessity products which would normally be wasted could be also used to donate to the most deprived. Aid organisations could negotiate with pharmaceutical company and beauty shops, libraries, furniture stores, etc. to make more use of their waste. With 2014 declared as the European Year of the fight against Food Waste, the opportunity is there for the European Commission to welcome and engage with this initiative and include it within the FEAD Programme. One of the most pressing environmental issue, food waste is also a large ethical dilemma that should be tackled by the EU through its Food Aid Programme. When you consider that Ireland produces one million tonnes of food waste each year according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it is scandalous to have 10% of the Irish population still suffering from food poverty.

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Europeans are at risk of poverty and material deprivation

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The proposed 34 amendments of the FEAD will be voted on May 7 2013 at the European Commission. While a majority of Member States and MEPs welcome the new fund, there are still a number of objections voiced by a blocking minority who object a number of aspects of the proposal and notably the mandatory participation. If the European Commission votes against the proposal, the EU would find itself in a situation in which member states do not wish to act together. However, those member states cannot prevent the other member states that do wish to cooperate and see the action put in place at national-level from doing so. Thus the European Commission may have to eventually change some of the amendments and potentially change the FEAD to an enhanced cooperation between voluntary Member states. Rendez-vous next week to find out what will be the future of the FEAD.