One in Ten People in EU Cannot Afford Adequate Nutrition

In 2023, 9.5% of the population in the European Union could not afford a nutritious meal with meat, fish, or vegetarian equivalent every two days, which is one of the main parameters of the European Social Rights Component to measure the family status of severe deprivation. The percentage increases by 1.2% in 2023 compared to 2022. Over this period, the number of people at risk of poverty also has grown from 19.7% in 2022 to 22.3% in 2023, an increase of 2.6 percentage points per year.

The highest proportion of people at risk of poverty who cannot afford a nutritious diet is found in Slovakia (45.7%), followed by Hungary (44.9%), and Bulgaria (40.2%), while the lowest proportions are found in Ireland (4.2%), Cyprus (5.0%), and Portugal (5.9%).

According to Eurostat, in the EU, the difference between the total population and those at risk of poverty in terms of being able to afford adequate food was 12.8 percentage points. At the national level, the dark spot in this statistic belongs to Hungary with a gap of 30.2 percentage points, followed by Slovakia (27.9%) and Greece (27.3%). The smallest differences – less than 4% – are in Sweden, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Ireland.