IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v63y2025i1p179-196.html

How Do European Countries Use EU‐Funded Food Aid and How Important Is It for the Most Deprived?

Author

Listed:
  • Karen Hermans
  • Bea Cantillon

Abstract

The Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) aims at providing food and (non‐)material assistance to the most vulnerable European citizens. Linking macro and micro data on the importance of FEAD resources shows, however, a mixed picture of targeting the most deprived: although FEAD budgets accrue more to countries with greater social needs, when the budgets are compared with the number of severely deprived persons, FEAD resources were found to be more than twice as high in Finland than in Hungary. This suggests that FEAD does not differentiate sufficiently across countries to focus on the poorest citizens within the Union. Moreover, a micro‐level analysis of how these budgets are spent in a number of selected countries (Belgium, Finland, Hungary and Spain) reveals large between‐ and within‐country variations in the developed FEAD programmes, indicating substantial discretionary leeway for Member States and social organisations to implement FEAD.

Suggested Citation

  • Karen Hermans & Bea Cantillon, 2025. "How Do European Countries Use EU‐Funded Food Aid and How Important Is It for the Most Deprived?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 63(1), pages 179-196, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:63:y:2025:i:1:p:179-196
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13568
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13568
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.13568?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Karen Hermans; & Bea Cantillon; & Anikó Bernát; & Elena Carrillo-Álvarez; & Irene Cussó-Parcerisas; & Lauri Mäkinen & Júlia Muñoz Martínez; & Péter Szivos;, 2023. "Food aid in four European countries: Assessing the price and content of charitable food aid packages by using food basket, household budget survey and contextual data," Working Papers 2301, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    2. Bas Bavel & Auke Rijpma, 2016. "How important were formalized charity and social spending before the rise of the welfare state? A long-run analysis of selected western European cases, 1400–1850," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 69(1), pages 159-187, February.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alfani, Guido & Ryckbosch, Wouter, 2016. "Growing apart in early modern Europe? A comparison of inequality trends in Italy and the Low Countries, 1500–1800," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 143-153.
    2. van Bavel, Bas, 2016. "The Invisible Hand?: How Market Economies have Emerged and Declined Since AD 500," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199608133.
    3. Broadberry, Stephen & Gardner, Leigh, 2016. "Economic Development In Africa And Europe: Reciprocal Comparisons," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 34(1), pages 11-37, March.
    4. Luque de Haro, Víctor Antonio, 2024. "Social inequalities in adult mortality across Europe (18th-21st centuries): A critical analysis of theories and evidence," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    5. James Foreman-Peck & Peng Zhou, 2021. "Correction to: fertility versus productivity: a model of growth with evolutionary equilibria," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 34(4), pages 1473-1474, October.
    6. Guido Alfani & Wouter Ryckbosch, 2015. "Was there a ‘Little Convergence’ in inequality? Italy and the Low Countries compared, ca. 1500-1800," Working Papers 557, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    7. Johanna Greiss; & Karen Hermans; & Bea Cantillon;, 2023. "The making of a European Social Union: The case of food banks and the right to minimum income protection," Working Papers 2306, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    8. Bas van Bavel, 2022. "Wealth inequality in pre‐industrial Europe: What role did associational organizations have?," Economic History Review, Economic History Society, vol. 75(3), pages 643-666, August.
    9. Zanini, Andrea, 2019. "Filantropia o controllo sociale? Le opere assistenziali di un feudatario del Settecento [Philanthropy or social control? The charitable activities of an eighteenth-century feudal landlord]," MPRA Paper 97479, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Felix S. F. Schaff, 2025. "The unequal spirit of the Protestant Reformation: particularism and wealth distribution in early modern Germany," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 30(3), pages 417-460, September.
    11. Cédric Chambru, 2019. "Do the Right Thing! Leaders, Weather Shocks and Social Conflicts in Pre-Industrial France," Working Papers 0161, European Historical Economics Society (EHES).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:63:y:2025:i:1:p:179-196. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.