Naples: Food affordability remains a problem for millions of Europeans. Eurostat data for 2025 show that 8.5% of people in the EU, or more than 38.3 million, could not afford a meal with meat, chicken or fish, or a vegetarian equivalent, every second day. Food affordability worsened slightly from 2024, because the number rose by about 100,000.

Italy sits above the EU average. In 2025, 9.3% of Italians could not afford such a meal, down from 9.9% in 2024, but the share still means nearly 5.5 million people. Cities such as Naples will read the figure as a signal for local welfare services, even though the national rate improved over the year.

The indicator is one of the material deprivation measures that Eurostat tracks. Jarko Pasanen, acting director of Eurostat’s Social Statistics Office, said the indicators help monitor inequality and socio-economic conditions, particularly during the energy crisis and recent rises in consumer prices.

The outlook is not reassuring. The European Central Bank has warned of food inflation linked to the war in Iran and the resulting energy cost spike. Food price increases have not yet appeared in full but are expected in the coming months, so next year’s data on food affordability could look worse than this year’s.

The 2025 numbers predate that pressure, which is why they matter as a baseline. Households that already skip a protein-rich meal have little room to absorb higher grocery bills, and social ministers will want to know which groups sit at the bottom of the distribution before prices climb further.

Eurostat collects the figure through the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions survey, which asks households about a set of basic items they cannot afford. The question on meals is one of several that together measure material and social deprivation, so a small change in this single item can signal wider pressure on household budgets. Statisticians caution that it measures a specific shortfall, a missing protein meal every second day, and not hunger as such. Even so, the indicator gives governments an early and comparable signal of food affordability pressure that income statistics alone can miss.

A rise of 100,000 people is small against the size of the EU population, but it ends a period in which many governments hoped the gap would narrow. Whether the 2026 figures show a larger jump will depend on how fast grocery prices follow the energy shock. Until then, food affordability stays one of the clearest tests of how well European welfare systems protect people from price rises.