Rationing in the European Federation
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Rationing in the European Federation has been in force since 2023, when the Federation introduced ration entitlements for staple foods in held territory. Each registered resident receives an entitlement to fixed quantities of bread, grain, fats, sugar and preserved foods each month, sold at fixed prices in euros. Allocations are planned from the municipal population registers and distributed by H&A Logistics. The registers' failure to record deaths, known as necro-fraud, is the most common civil offence in the Federation, and the correction of the registers in 2027, the Reconciliation, cut allocations to the cities of held territory by several million entitlements.
Background
Food production for a population of about eight billion continued after 2020, and the shortages of the early 2020s in the Federation were caused by the collapse of transport. Deep-sea shipping largely stopped during the marine insurance crisis of 2021 and 2022, and from 2023 the loss of farmland in southern and eastern Europe and the arrival of evacuees reduced the supply of food per head in held territory. Prices of staple foods rose by about half between 2021 and 2023.
System
The Federation's rationing regulation of 2023 covers bread and flour, grain, cooking fats, sugar, tinned and preserved foods, and infant food. Each registered resident holds an entitlement, issued by the municipality, which is drawn against at any shop or canteen in held territory. Fresh food, meat, fish and anything not listed are sold freely, at market prices.
Allocations are calculated each month from the municipal population registers, the only complete record of who lives in held territory. H&A Logistics moves the allocated food by rail from ports, depots and farms to the municipalities. Residents who are not on a register, among them evacuees who have not registered and people who have moved without notice, hold no entitlement.
Necro-fraud
A death that is not registered leaves the dead person's entitlement in force. Failure to report a death, or the use of a dead person's entitlement, is an offence under the rationing regulation, and is commonly called necro-fraud. Most cases involve households continuing to draw the entitlement of a member who has died. Prosecutions are rare.
From 2024 H&A Logistics applied a correction factor to the registers, an estimate of the share of registered residents who had died without being recorded, when planning allocations. Food drawn on unrecorded deaths was in practice eaten by residents with no entitlement.
Reconciliation
In 2027, when the H&A Records Division moved to day-count dating, the municipal registers of held territory were converted into a single format and compared for the first time. The comparison found several million entitlements in force for people who had died, or had left or been evacuated without being removed. Among them were about 150,000 entitlements registered in Venice, which had been drawn for four years after the city was abandoned.
The registers were corrected, and allocations were cut accordingly from the following month. The cut fell on the unregistered population that had been fed from the surplus, and in the winter of 2027–28 deaths from malnutrition and related illness rose in every large city of held territory. Estimates of the excess deaths range from 40,000 to 110,000.