IN 2012, UNDER THE PROGRAM FOR THE MOST UNDERPRIVILEGED PERSONS, The EU will allocate the biggest amount of grains to Romania

Next year, the European Union will allocate about 112,000 tons of grains to Romania, out of a total of about 162,000 tons in the intervention stocks, representing the highest volume of grains granted to a member state in 2012, according to a press release sent to our editors. Romania is followed by Bulgaria, which will receive 39,000 tons of grains and Slovakia, with approximately 9,000 tons.

According to the press release, under the program of providing food to the most underprivileged citizens of the EU, 12 million Euros have been allocated to Romania for next year. The allocated total amounts to approximately 113 million Euros, far lower than in the previous years, when it amounted to almost 500 million Euros. The reduction was caused by an April ruling of the Court of Justice, which stipulates that the foods that are the object of this program must come from the public stocks of the EU.

Estimates show that in the EU, 43 million people are risk of food poverty, meaning people that can"t afford to eat a full meal once every two days. A number of 18 million people in 19 member states, havereceived 440,000 tons of food in 2009.

The EU program for distributing foods to the most underprivileged persons in the Community has been operating since December 1987, when the Council passed the norms concerning the unlocking of agricultural products located in public intervention funds for the member states which wanted to use them as food aids for the most underprivileged people in the Community.