A battle over who should pay for free food for the EU’s poorest citizens has turned into a power-struggle between the European Commission and national governments.  

The EU has, since 1987, run a programme to supply the EU’s poorest citizens with food from intervention stocks. In recent years, around 18 million people in 20 EU countries have benefited from the programme. But as successive reforms of the Common Agricultural Policy reduced intervention stocks, the programme had to buy food on the open market to supply national schemes that distribute food to the poor. Several member states now argue that the Commission should no longer be involved: food schemes unrelated to the use of EU intervention stocks fall into the social policy areas that are strictly national responsibilities, they say.

The Commission put forward a proposal in September 2010 to extend the programme for 2012 and 2013, but this was blocked by a minority of member states. In April this year, the European Court of Justice upheld a German complaint against the programme, and confirmed that the Commission should use supplies only from intervention stocks.

As a result, the Commission revised its proposal in June: it reduced the envisaged funding from €500m to €113m, corresponding to the sum needed to cover purchases from intervention stocks only. But this proposal also remains blocked, despite a further revision in October, when the Commission relocated it from agricultural policy to the EU’s own social policy framework.

In November, Germany indicated it would modify its position, after intense lobbying from the French government, thus bringing to an end the blocking minority in Council. However, Germany insisted on conditions for its support, including a Commission pledge to end the programme in its current form in 2013. The Commission has not yet provided any such declaration.

Poland, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU’s Council of Ministers, has been working for agreement on a revised proposal, but the Commission is, say officials, standing on its dignity, arguing not only that the EU should look after its poorest citizens, but also that its right of initiative is infringed by the attempt to impose limitations on what it chooses to propose. The issue has even been discussed by José Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president, and Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.

There are good arguments for the Commission defending its right of initiative as a general principle. There are fewer arguments for choosing to fight the battle on the issue of the food aid programme. Many see an end to this programme as long overdue, viewing it as an anachronism dating from a time when intervention stocks were out of control, and when the public was angry that perfectly good food was being stored to prop up prices.

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