Reaffirming EU Leadership in Global Food Security and Nutrition

Global progress on hunger and malnutrition is increasingly under threat as conflict, climate shocks, economic pressures and declining development assistance converge. While global hunger fell slightly in 2025, around 645 million people still experienced hunger, and 2.69 billion people could not afford a healthy diet. The burden is particularly severe in fragile, conflict-affected and climate-vulnerable settings. Across 23 crisis-affected contexts, 35.5 million children are acutely malnourished, including 9.7 million experiencing severe acute malnutrition. 

This Generation Nutrition policy brief highlights that the European Union (EU) is at a critical juncture. As negotiations advance on the 2028–2034 Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) and the proposed Global Europe Instrument, food security and nutrition risk being overshadowed by competing economic, geopolitical and security priorities. Following the conclusion of the EU Action Plan on Nutrition, the EU is operating in a strategic policy limbo without a dedicated roadmap to guide programming under the post-2027 MFF. This vacuum coincides with a ~23% contraction in global ODA and a paradigm shift within EU external action. The brief calls for nutrition to remain at the heart of EU external action, recognising it as a foundation for human development, resilience, gender equality, economic development, stability and peace.  

Access to adequate food and nutrition is a fundamental human right and an essential foundation of equitable and sustainable development. By supporting this, EU external action can contribute to more resilient societies, economies and partnerships. Delivering on this ambition requires a renewed EU political framework for nutrition, backed by adequate, predictable and long-term financing.

Generation Nutrition calls on the EU and its Member States to: 

• Adopt a successor EU nutrition strategy to provide renewed political direction and accountability. 
• Protect humanitarian and external-action financing. 
• Strengthen accountability, including measurable nutrition indicators and transparent financial tracking. 
• Link humanitarian response with longer-term resilience, particularly in fragile contexts, through multi-year approaches. 
• Meaningfully involve and resource civil society organisations, recognising their role as strategic partners.  

Protecting food security and nutrition within the EU's next financial and policy frameworks is not simply a humanitarian imperative. It is an investment in healthier and more resilient societies and in sustainable human and economic development.