New measures to strengthen and boost funding for a European Union (EU) scheme to provide fruit, vegetables and milk products in schools were backed by the agriculture committee this week.
They put more emphasis on educating children in healthy eating, increase the budget and merge into one the current separate schemes for milk and fruit in schools.
“A healthy, balanced diet is the foundation of good health but the consumption of fruit, vegetables and milk has been declining across the EU,” said Marc Tarabella (S&D, BE), who steered the legislation through Parliament and led the EP’s negotiating team.
“This is why it is of the utmost importance to strengthen the school fruit, vegetables and milk scheme by increasing its budget and making it more focused on healthy-eating education.”
“Parliament also ensured the financial stability of the program by preventing member states from unilaterally cutting its budget or changing the criteria for allocating EU funds among themselves.”
The parliament won an additional €20 million (US$21.74 million) a year for milk measures.
This brings the annual funding for milk and milk products up to €100 million, with €150 million for fruit and vegetables.
Members of the European Parliament also insisted on a fairer distribution of EU funds between member states by setting two core criteria for the entire scheme (the share of six to 10-year-old children in the population and the degree of development of the region within the member state).
Past levels of milk-scheme funds will be taken into account and possibly reviewed after the first six years of the new scheme and will be topped up with a new, minimum annual amount of EU aid per child.
