EU agriculture ministers, including Ireland’s Brendan Smith, have given broad support to the scheme, which aims to start next year to promote healthy eating and to tackle child obesity. An estimated 22 million children in the EU are overweight. More than five million of those are obese, and that figure is expected to rise by 400,000 every year. The scheme, proposed by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, would see €90 million a year earmarked from EU funds, with each country matching the amount of cash that it receives from Brussels.