What EU country boasts the highest percentage of people unable to afford a proper meal?

New data from Eurostat shows that in 2023, around one in ten (9.5%) EU consumers were unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent at least every second day, an increase of 1.2 percentage points on the previous year.

Allied to that, the percentage of people at risk of poverty (i.e. below 60% of median equivalised income) in the EU stood at 22.3% last year, an incase of 2.6 percentage points on the previous year (19.7%).

The highest share of people at risk of poverty, which are unable to afford a proper meal, was in Slovakia (45.7%), the data showed, followed by Hungary (44.9%) and Bulgaria (40.2%).

At the other end of the spectrum, the lowest share was found in Ireland (4.2%), followed by Cyprus (5.0%) and Portugal (5.9%).

Material and social deprivation

‘The capacity to afford a meal with meat, fish or vegetarian equivalent every second day is among the items observed at the household level to calculate the severe material and social deprivation rate,’ Eurostat said.

Across the European Union, there was a 12.8 percentage point gap between the general population and those at risk of poverty in terms of their ability to afford a proper meal. Hungary had the largest disparity at 30.2 percentage points, followed by Slovakia at 27.9 percentage points and Greece at 27.3 percentage points.

Conversely, Sweden, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Portugal, and Ireland had the smallest differences, all below 4.0 percentage points.

Percentage of consumers unable to afford a proper meal every second day, 2023 (%)