Almost 20,000 pupils at Portugal’s public schools are getting free school lunches this academic year, paid for by local budgets, Jornal de Notícias reports. Their families do not qualify for the benefit based on income: the state already covers all or half of the cost of school meals for around 370,000 pupils who receive school social support (Ação Social Escolar, ASE).
Municipalities that decided to pay for everyone fall into two broad groups. The first includes Nisa, Oleiros, Penamacor, Alcoutim and Alandroal — small, ageing municipalities in the interior and along the Spanish border, 200–300 km from Lisbon. Each has a population of between 2,500 and 6,000. There are few children, so the cost is manageable for local authorities. Schools in these areas are struggling to attract pupils, and free school meals are one way of helping families with children stay.
The second group consists of Paredes and Paços de Ferreira, industrial towns about half an hour from Porto and the heart of Portugal’s furniture industry. They are 25–30 km from central Porto, but purchasing power in both cities is below the national average. Vila Real de Santo António, on the Spanish border in the Algarve, is another case: 3,350 pupils and around €500,000 a year. Vila Real and Montalegre in the north of the country are introducing free lunches gradually from this year.
Lisbon has taken a different approach. Since January 2024, the city government had been giving a 50% discount to pupils who do not receive ASE. That covers more than 30,000 children — around 60% of the capital’s schoolchildren, and more than the total number of pupils receiving free meals nationwide. Many of their parents are relatively well-off. In June, the city government — run by a right-wing coalition of PSD, CDS-PP and IL — scrapped the discount. Even without the discount, though, the prices are hardly a burden. A school lunch now costs €1.46 instead of €0.73. That is the standard price across Portugal: it is set by the Education Ministry and is below the actual cost of providing the meal, with the state and municipalities covering the difference.
Given that the cost of a school lunch does not exactly hit parents’ wallets very hard, we might venture to say that the debate over the Lisbon discount looks more like a bit of political manoeuvring. The Socialists in Lisbon’s city government pointed out that the discount was introduced ahead of the 2025 local elections and disappeared after them. Coincidence?
