site.btaEurostat: Nearly 45% of Bulgarians at Risk of Poverty Cannot Afford Proper Meal

In 2022, Bulgaria had the highest share of people at risk of poverty, 44.6%, who were unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day, followed by Romania (43.0%) and Slovakia (40.5%), Eurostat reported. By comparison, 19.7% of people at risk of poverty in the EU were unable to afford a proper meal, 2.2 percentage points (pp) higher than in 2021 (17.5%).

On the other hand, the lowest share was recorded in Ireland (5.0%), followed by Luxembourg (5.1%) and Cyprus (5.6%).

In 2022, 8.3% of the EU population were unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day, one pp higher compared with 2021 (7.3%). The difference between total and at-risk-of-poverty population in terms of capacity to afford a proper meal was visible across EU countries.