Brussels, 24/10/2012 (Agence Europe) - The objective of the proposal - put forward by the European Commission on Wednesday 24 October to create a Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived - is to support member state schemes providing food to the most deprived people and clothing and other essential goods to homeless people and materially-deprived children.
In concrete terms, the Commission proposed to allocate an envelope of €2.5 billion to the Fund for the 2014-2020 period as part of its June 2011 proposal for the multiannual financial framework. Member states wanting this European manna would finance 15% of the costs of their national programmes, whilst the remaining 85% would come from the Fund.
Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion Laszlo Andor said he hopes that, in this current period of crisis, “member states and the European Parliament will adopt this proposal and the accompanying budget swiftly so that the support reaches those in need without delay”.
The Fund proposed on Wednesday is intended to replace the current European food distribution programme for the Most Deprived People (MDP) which was created in 1987 to distribute the then agricultural surpluses. In 2011, six countries (Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands and the Czech Republic) had balked at approving the prolongation of the MDP in 2012 and 2013, arguing that this programme should come from the EU's social budget and not from the agricultural budget.
The EUROPE 2020 Strategy commits the EU to reducing the number of people in or at risk of poverty by at least 20 million. Out of the 116 million people in the EU who are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, about 40 million are suffering from severe material deprivation. The EU also counts 25.4 million children at risk of poverty or social exclusion. (OL/transl.fl)