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The Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived (FEAD) aims at providing food and (non‐)material assistance to the most vulnerable European citizens. Linking macro and micro data on the importance of FEAD resources shows, however, a mixed picture of targeting the most deprived: although FEAD budgets accrue more to countries with greater social needs, when the budgets are compared with the number of severely deprived persons, FEAD resources were found to be more than twice as high in Finland than in Hungary. This suggests that FEAD does not differentiate sufficiently across countries to focus on the poorest citizens within the Union. Moreover, a micro‐level analysis of how these budgets are spent in a number of selected countries (Belgium, Finland, Hungary and Spain) reveals large between‐ and within‐country variations in the developed FEAD programmes, indicating substantial discretionary leeway for Member States and social organisations to implement FEAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the 'Fund for European Aid to the Most Deprived' (FEAD) is a peripheral financing instrument with respect to European cohesion policy, it is a concrete case of a redistributive and highly targeted European anti‐poverty programme. In this sense, it is a unique supranational instrument providing social protection to European citizens, playing on the necessity of food aid in most European Union (EU) countries. With this in mind, we shed light on the Fund's budgetary scope in relation to national welfare state efforts. Also, we argue that there is some indication that FEAD could potentially contribute to shifting responsibilities from the national to the European level. For a better understanding of this phenomenon, we draw parallels to the case of the United States' Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program. We conclude that FEAD bears resemblance to a contemporary 'Trojan horse': it is welcomed by the Member States as a deceptively innocent EU gift but it might in the long run support the role of the EU as an agent that plugs gaps within national social protection schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]