On Tuesday, February 25, the European Parliament voted to maintain the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) at €3.5 billion for 2014-2020. The informal agreement concluded with the Council and the Commission was adopted by a vote of 592 to 61 with 31 abstentions.

A bone of contention among Member States since 2009, the issue of food aid for the most deprived was the subject of a compromise put forth by the Commission in autumn of 2012. The plan was to reduce the FEAD to €2.5 billion. However, Parliament fought to maintain the fund’s 2014-2020 budget at €35 billion, the same amount allocated to the European Food Aid Program for 2007-2013.

“We succeeded in achieving our key aims in the year-long negotiations with the Commission and the Member States – to raise the budget from €2.5 to €3.5 billion, to strengthen the role of anti-poverty organizations in the design, operation and monitoring of the program and to simplify the administrative procedures,” said the Parliament rapporteur for the FEAD, Emer Costello (S&D, IE) following the vote. “The new FEAD program that we have now agreed to is the first-ever specific European initiative that seeks to reach out to people experiencing extreme deprivation, particularly food poverty, homelessness and child poverty, in all Member States.”

The scope of the FEAD, which replaces the European Food Aid Program, has been expanded to include both food distribution and material assistance (e.g. clothing and school materials) as well as to finance social inclusion measures for the EU’s most in need. The agreement takes up Parliament’s request to set the program’s co-financing rate at 85% of eligible expenditure and to raise it to 95% for those countries hardest hit by the crisis.

There remains only for the Council to approve the agreement in the coming weeks. Once approval is granted, the agreement stipulates that the fund will be operational immediately to avoid any disruption in aid distribution.