Belgium’s Free School Meals End Leaves Pupils Hungry

The end of free school meals in Belgium’s Federation Wallonia-Brussels (FWB) has cut access to hot lunches in disadvantaged schools by 68%, according to a survey published Tuesday by the Ligue des Familles and the nonprofit Ecole a table. The organisations warn that some pupils are now arriving at school without a packed lunch, and that canteen registrations have fallen sharply since the scheme was scrapped at the start of the 2026-2027 academic year.

The survey, conducted between 4 and 24 September and based on responses from 169 of the 330 schools that previously benefited from the programme, found that one in four schools has eliminated its meal service entirely. In schools that kept meals but made them paid, registrations dropped by 60% in September. Parents now face bills of between 54 and 78 euros per month per child.

A Programme Dismantled

Until this year, a 2023 decree allowed roughly 430 preschool and primary schools in disadvantaged areas to offer complete, free, healthy and sustainable meals. In the 2025-2026 school year, the scheme covered 429 schools across 80 communes and 55,288 children, backed by a budget of 21.4 million euros and a subsidy of 3.70 euros per meal.

That framework was dismantled when the FWB Parliament voted its 2026 budget on 16 December 2025, ending the dedicated “repas” decree and its 21.4 million euros. Instead, 8.2 million euros was folded into the broader “encadrement differencie” (differentiated support) budget, which covers roughly 760 schools and allows them to choose whether to spend the money on meals or on other needs.

The Ligue des Familles calculates that the average subsidy per meal collapses from 3.70 euros to just 0.43 euros under the new arrangement, and to as little as four cents in the poorest schools. The reform was pushed through by the governing MR-Engages coalition, which has defended the move as a response to a difficult budget and debt situation in the FWB.

What Schools Are Reporting

The consequences described in the survey are stark. Nearly half of the school directors surveyed report that children arrive with an empty stomach in the morning, and 43% report cases of pupils with nothing at all to eat at midday.

“Hot meals are a real asset for education. Having a balanced meal is essential for pupils’ neurons to function properly,” one school director told the researchers. In an earlier open letter signed by 80 school directors in December 2025, the authors warned that for “a certain number of children, this hot meal is their only ‘proper’ meal of the day.”

The pattern is consistent across the region. A separate investigation by Le Soir published on 29 September found that in schools where meals became paid, enrolment fell from 66.5% in 2025-2026 to 27%, and that 92% of disadvantaged schools surveyed had made meals paid.

Local authorities have stepped in with partial fixes. The City of Brussels has capped meals at 2 euros in its official-network schools; at the Steyls school in Laeken, staff told RTBF that the number of meals served had dropped from about 300 to roughly 40. In Charleroi, hot meals have been replaced with soup in 24 schools, and where paid hot meals are offered at 3.20 euros per child, only three pupils had enrolled at one school, ecole de la Neuville.

Notably, participation remained stable in the eight schools in the survey sample that managed to keep meals free, suggesting that cost, rather than demand, is driving the collapse.

A Question of Rights

The dispute has taken on a legal dimension. The Delegue general aux droits de l’enfant (General Delegate for Children’s Rights) has grounded its objections in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Belgian Constitution, the European Child Guarantee, and a 2019 Council of State ruling that free education covers the substance of schooling, not merely access to it.

“Abolishing free school meals for 55,300 children is not a saving: it is a renunciation of equal opportunity,” the Delegate said. The office has also warned that school food should be treated as a strategic lever for public health and equity.

The political opposition has been vocal. “For some of the 55,000 children who benefit from the system, this is sometimes the only decent meal of the day. It is completely unworthy of our society to shave a budget like that,” said Dorothee De Rodder of the PS. Bruno Bauwens of the PTB argued that “it will be the communes and the parents who have to pay for these budget cuts,” while Benedicte Linard of Ecolo put it simply: “You cannot learn on an empty stomach.”

The Government’s Defence

The office of Education Minister Valerie Glatigny (MR) has rejected the framing that free meals have been abolished. “It is not correct to say that these schools have only this 547,000 euros to organise free meals,” the cabinet told RTBF. “The previous system relied on an annual call for projects that was administratively heavy, unstable and time-consuming. This reform does not have the effect of abolishing free meals, but of stabilising them and making them more sustainable over time.”

Glatigny has also indicated that quality requirements on nutrition and product origin will remain in force, but that meals will no longer necessarily have to be complete, “which opens the way to more flexible formulas.” Minister-President Elisabeth Degryse has described the savings as “the measures which, failing to be just, seemed the least inequitable.”

What’s Next

The Ligue des Familles and Ecole a table have called on political decision-makers to reverse the decision and refinance complete, free, healthy and sustainable meals in the FWB’s most vulnerable schools. They argue the survey results must weigh on the budget negotiations currently under way.

Beyond the immediate funding fight, the episode raises broader questions about how the region balances fiscal consolidation against its commitments on child poverty and equal opportunity. With roughly 20% of parents of children aged three to nine unable to afford healthy, balanced food daily, the school canteen has functioned as a quiet but essential safety net. Whether that net is restored, replaced, or left to communes and families to patch together will be decided in the coming months.

For now, the eight schools that kept meals free stand as an unintended experiment: where cost was removed, children kept eating.