The European Parliament adopted the declaration on supplying approved charities working to implement the European food aid programme for the most deprived. It states that at least 40 million Europeans in the 25 Member States of the European Union do not have enough to eat. Meeting the food needs of all Europeans is one of the priorities of the common agricultural policy and one of the founding principles of the EC Treaty. The European food aid programme for the most deprived has proved its worth and is now vital for millions of Europeans however the Parliament is concerned about the future of this operation because Community public intervention stocks are steadily disappearing physically and the programme is thus losing its legal basis.

Therefore, it calls on the Commission and the Council to:

- recognise the fact that there are undernourished people in the European Union and acknowledge the need to meet their food requirements;

- place the European food aid programme on a permanent footing and provide a global multiannual budget allocation;

- open the measure up to new sectors such as pork, poultry and eggs;

- include in the programme innovative measures to ensure the distribution of balanced food rations;

- regard food aid as part of the aim of reducing poverty;

- modify the rules so as to allow: for the stocks reserved for the programme to be built up, i.e. set aside for and allocated to the most deprived; for the bartering procedure to be extended; for products that are not available as part of intervention stocks to be bought on the Community market.