Reinforcing the European Child Guarantee

With the publication of to the 2026 Social Package including the EU Anti-Poverty Strategy and Child Guarantee, the Healthy Wave consortium welcomes these initiatives.

Taken together, these initiatives demonstrate an increasing recognition that child poverty and social exclusion cannot be addressed through fragmented or short-term measures. Instead, they require integrated support systems, coordinated governance, prevention-focused policies, and sustained investment in children and families.

Child poverty remains one of the EU’s most persistent and damaging challenges, affecting more than 19 million children and their families, or 1 children in 4, far above the poverty rate for adults. Between 2019 and 2023, child and family poverty rose by 4.2 per cent, driven by the cost-of-living crisis, entrenched inequalities, and the long-term effects of the pandemic. Growing up in poverty leads to lifelong inequalities affecting education, employment, health, housing, mental well-being, and social participation. According to the OECD, the economic cost of childhood disadvantage amounts to 3.4 per cent of GDP annually, undermining Europe’s long-term growth, competitiveness, and social cohesion. Poverty is also the most common underlying risk factor that leads to children being separated from their families and institutionalised.

While expansions of school meals have improved food security, over 1 million children in the EU still lack daily access to fresh fruit and vegetables. The Commission will promote provision of school meals for children in need, working together with the School Meal Coalition, through mutual learning and technical assistance. It will also leverage the EU School Fruit, Vegetables and Milk Scheme and the ESF+ to extend quality nutrition support, under the new Multiannual Financial Framework.

Recently the SchoolFood4Change met with Executive Vice-President of the European Commission Roxana Minzatu. Together, they discussed how the Whole School Food Approach can contribute to implementing the European Child Guarantee. In the communication on Instagram, she wrote she will be happy to work with the SchoolFood4Change initiative and involve them in the future work with member states on promoting school meals and strengthening Child Guarantee. Our partner Rikolto is part of the SchoolFood4Change project, and the Healthy Wave project has the Whole School Food Approach as backbone of our project. So, this was wonderful news.

The European Child Guarantee has already delivered tangible results, from expanded school meal programmes to innovative inclusion initiatives and structural national reforms. These developments have helped place child and family poverty higher on political agendas, improve coordination across policy sectors, and promote a holistic, intersectional approach to reducing poverty and social exclusion. 

The Healthy Wave consortium calls for the structural expansion of quality school meals for children in need, supported by sustained EU and national funding. School meals should be treated as a practical anti-poverty, health and education measure, not only as an isolated nutrition initiative.