Europe's poorest in bittersweet food-aid victory

Europe's poorest citizens secured two more years of food aid on Monday -- but still face seeing a free-meals scheme collapse by the end of 2013. After Germany backed down on a months-long threat to slash the cash value of the food by 80 percent at the end of this year, the "Aid for the Needy" scheme will be maintained, after talks among European Union farming ministers in Brussels. EU agriculture commissioner Dacian Ciolos said he was "extremely happy" that charities would be able to keep distributing millions of meals "in 2012 and 2013," and was instructing his staff "to ensure the continuation of the scheme this winter." An annual pot this year worth 480 million euros ($660 million) has been distributed in the form of surplus food stemming from agricultural budgets under a scheme going back to 1987. In April the European Court of Justice, ruling on a request from Germany, said the programme could only use supplies from EU food stocks and six countries blocked a plan to keep aid flowing in the form of cash payments under social goals. Stocks have fallen in recent years, forcing the use of EU money instead to buy supplies on the market to feed the hungry -- a move that has angered some EU nations. German farming minister Ilse Aigner signalled a softening of opposition on her way into the talks, offering a two-year transitional deadline for a new scheme to be agreed. French counterpart Bruno Le Maire said "difficult" negotiations left Paris with no alternative but to "acknowledge" that the EU budget cannot fund the aid over its next, already hotly-contested budget cycle, running from 2014 to 2020. The European Commission, in draft budget proposals, has suggested that 2.8 billion euros be set aside from so-called cohesion funds for this purpose throughout that period. The others making up a blocking minority alongside Germany were Britain, the main backer of reduced EU budgets in future, as well as the Czech Republic, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden.