The European Union (EU) is continuing to work strategically to achieve its commitments to help reduce the number of stunted children under the age of five by at least 7 million by 2025 and to allocate EUR 3.5 billion (2014–2020) to improve nutrition.

Preliminary results for 2016 indicate a three-fold increase in the EU’s funding commitments to nutrition since 2014. The total amount of funding commitments in the last three years is EUR 1.8 billion, which represents 51 % of the EU overall financial commitment for the period 2014–2020. In 2016 alone, the EU’s financial commitments to nutrition have reached EUR 790 million. This is a significant development, but this pace of investment needs to be maintained in order to reach the EUR 3.5 billion target by 2020. The latest available data from 2016 shows that an additional one million children will be averted from stunting by 2025, in the EU’s prioritised countries for nutrition. This is double last year’s calculation and represents, in total, 2 million extra children averted from stunting, above and beyond what was anticipated when the  global nutrition targets were set.