Belgium’s Restos du Coeur Warn of Food Aid Crisis

The Fédération des Restos du Coeur de Belgique raised the alarm on Thursday, warning that a sharp surge in demand for food aid is colliding with a deep cut to federal funding, according to RTBF. Distribution figures across the country have climbed steeply this year, and the charity says its ability to keep helping is now in question.

“If we no longer have the means to operate, who will come to the aid of all these people?” said Frank Duval, president of the Federation, in the RTBF report. The warning came two days before the World Day for the Refusal of Poverty and Misery, observed on 17 October.

A Surge in Demand Across the Country

The scale of the increase varies sharply by location, but the direction is uniform. Between January and August 2026, compared with the same period in 2025, the number of meals and food parcels distributed in Quiévrain (Hainaut) rose by 48.4 per cent. Aarschot (Flemish Brabant) recorded a 26.3 per cent increase, Mons 17.3 per cent, and Tirlemont (Tienen, Flemish Brabant) 10.5 per cent.

To keep pace, the Federation had to double its budget for protein-rich products, from €67,000 in 2025 to €134,000 in 2026. At the same time, the federal budget for food aid fell from €27 million to €15 million — a cut of more than 44 per cent.

The Restos du Coeur’s own figures put the reduction even steeper. Its Dutch-language website states that the 2026 federal budget cuts food-aid resources by more than 60 per cent, “from 40 to 15 million euros” — a discrepancy in the baseline figure (€27M versus €40M) that the organisation has not reconciled publicly. The Federation has forecast a deficit of about €200,000 for the year.

Beyond One Charity

The pressure is not confined to the Restos du Coeur. An inquiry by the Fédération des Services Sociaux (FdSS) found that the rise in demand affects the majority of food-aid structures in Wallonia and Brussels, and that nearly half of them have been forced to reduce distributions or dip into their financial reserves.

The backdrop is a broad deterioration in living standards. In 2025, 1.9 million people in Belgium were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, according to Statbel, while nearly 561,000 people use food aid at least once a year, according to the FdSS. The same body estimates the number of beneficiaries has roughly doubled in a decade and grown by about 251 per cent over 30 years.

The pain is unevenly felt. Some 35 in every 1,000 Flemish residents used a food distribution in the past year, compared with 64 per 1,000 Walloons and 73 per 1,000 Brussels residents. Most beneficiaries turn to non-profits: 44.4 per cent use non-profit organisations, while fewer than 4 per cent rely on the Restos du Coeur directly.

The Human Reality Behind the Figures

For the charity’s volunteers, the statistics translate into individual stories. At the Laeken distribution centre in Brussels, Oleksand, a young Ukrainian beneficiary, described relying on parcels to feed his family. “It’s hard to buy food at the moment. Here it’s much cheaper than in the shops, so these parcels are vital for my family,” he said.

Andrei, a Romanian immigrant and father of seven, listed the pressures piling up. “Everything has gone up — food, fuel, gas, electricity, rent. It’s enormous.”

Sohade El Fahidi, who manages the Laeken centre, traced the trend back several years. “Since 2020, precariousness has only increased,” she said, citing the pandemic, inflation, energy costs and purchasing power, and adding that government decisions on unemployment were now compounding the strain.

The Belgian Red Cross has also had to stretch its resources. Stéphanie Miraglia, the organisation’s food-aid manager, said baskets have been trimmed to “eight meals instead of ten, with less protein than before.”

Policy Reform and a Funding Dispute

A central driver, according to the charity and the RTBF report, is the 2025 federal reform of unemployment and insertion rules. Some 194,000 jobseekers were expected to be excluded from unemployment between January and July 2026, losing hundreds of euros a month.

The federal government disputes the framing of the funding picture. The office of Anneleen Van Bossuyt (N-VA), federal minister for social integration, argues that the €15.5 million allocated for 2026 includes €10.1 million under the official FSE+ programme — €8.9 million in EU funds and €1.2 million in federal co-financing — plus €5.4 million in additional federal financing. An exceptional €23 million granted in 2023 and 2024 is no longer provided from 2025.

Van Bossuyt has stressed that food aid is primarily a competence of Belgium’s federated entities, the communities, and said it is “of course out of the question that food banks find themselves in financial difficulty.”

Compounding the budget squeeze is a decline in other resources. Fewer unsold items are being donated, anti-waste apps such as TooGoodToGo are competing for surplus food, and public and EU supplies have fallen.

What’s Next

The Restos du Coeur is calling on society to support the sector urgently, framing the debate around food as a fundamental right. “Behind every figure lies a human reality,” Duval said. “Cutting food aid is not a simple budget adjustment: it is calling into question an essential human right … food must never become a luxury.”

He warned that what was once an emergency has become permanent — and risks becoming normalised. “We are facing an emergency that has become permanent, to the point of being trivialised. But seeing families, workers, students or retirees depend on food aid must never become a normality, nor be accepted as a fatality.”

The charity marked its position with a demonstration in Brussels on 26 September demanding the right to food. Its latest appeal, issued ahead of the 17 October observance, reflects a sector watching both its costs and its caseload climb — with little indication either is set to ease in the months ahead.