FEAD-Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived: Valuable support but its contribution to reducing poverty is not yet established

Summary:

In spite of the overall wealth of the European Union, almost one in four Europeans is still at risk of poverty or social exclusion. The fight against poverty and social exclusion is at the heart of the Union’s “Europe 2020” strategy. The Commission devotes €3.8 billion through the Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) for the period 2014-2020. The FEAD aim is to alleviate the forms of extreme poverty, with the greatest social exclusion impact, such as homelessness, child poverty and food deprivation.

We assessed whether the FEAD was designed to be an effective tool to achieve this goal.  We found that the FEAD has been well embedded in the social policy framework. Moreover, it contributes to Member States’ approaches in alleviating poverty. It further contains innovative social inclusion measures.

However, we found that the Fund remains essentially a food support scheme and does not always target to the most extreme forms of poverty in Member States. Finally, we could not establish its contribution to reducing poverty because of incomplete monitoring.

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