BRUSSELS, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- Money to feed Europe's poor should rise to $723 million from $448 million, the European Union's commissioner for agriculture and rural development said.
"The recent hike in food prices has hit every one of us, in particular the most underprivileged members of our society," Mariann Fischer Boel of Denmark said in proposing the 2009 increase.
"The fact is that 43 million EU citizens cannot afford a meal with meat, chicken or fish every second day," she said.
The food program, set up in 1987 after an unusually cold winter, would also, for the first time, include fruit, vegetables and cooking oil, Fischer Boel said.
The aid -- distributed in cooperation with charities and local social-services agencies -- is given to a wide range of impoverished people, including families, the elderly and homeless, people with disabilities, migrant workers and impoverished people seeking asylum, the EU said.
Starting in 2010, the EU would pay 75 percent of the program's costs for most countries -- and 85 percent for poorer regions -- with recipient countries paying the balance.
As of 2013, EU countries would match the money they get from Brussels, with poorer regions paying 25 percent of their costs.
Nineteen of the EU's 27 countries participate, with Italy taking the lion's share of the money, or about $100 million, followed by Spain and France, the EU said.
