Slovak children’s commissioner calls hot school meals and water a right

Slovakia’s commissioner for children, Jozef Mikloško, said on 4 October 2026 that access to hot food and drinking water in schools was a basic child’s right, after his office monitored school catering in ten municipalities with marginalised Roma communities.¹²

Monitoring finds gaps in hot meals

The Office of the Commissioner for Children conducted field monitoring of catering arrangements across the ten municipalities. According to the office’s findings, primary schools in three of them did not serve children a hot meal each day and instead provided a dry food package.¹²

The office also reported that, for more than 90 per cent of children in the monitored locations, school lunch was their only hot and nutritionally complete meal of the day. That figure and the finding concerning the three municipalities were reported through the commissioner’s monitoring and are not independently confirmed in the dossier.¹²

Mikloško argued that the availability of hot food and drinking water was part of a child’s right to equal conditions in education, rather than simply a question of comfort or the type of food served. He said a child’s ability to exercise the right to education depended directly on not being hungry at school.¹²

Costs and school organisation

The commissioner identified financial accessibility and the organisation of the school day as problem areas. He said food co-payments or related charges that socially disadvantaged families could not afford could exclude children from school meal arrangements.¹²

He also linked catering conditions to children’s health and dignity. In his account, lunch breaks that were too short, or failures caused by limited capacity, could prevent pupils from eating calmly and within an appropriate period.¹²

Mikloško said children’s rights were endangered when a system placed obstacles between them and basic physiological needs. He added that failure by a school or its founder to provide conditions for hot meals and drinking water affected a child’s right to favourable development.¹²

Describing the consequences of inadequate provision, Mikloško said: "Ak zriaďovateľ alebo škola nedokáže zabezpečiť podmienky na podávanie teplej stravy a pitnej vody, dieťa prichádza o základnú záchrannú sieť". His statement characterised school food and water as a basic safeguard for children.¹

Education and basic needs

The commissioner’s position connects school catering with several rights: access to education on equal terms, favourable development, health protection and dignified conditions. Under that view, the issue is not limited to whether food is nominally available, but also includes whether families can afford it and whether pupils have enough time and capacity to eat.¹²

The monitoring focused on municipalities with marginalised Roma communities. The dossier does not provide an independent verification of the reported percentages or identify the three municipalities where schools were said to substitute dry packages for hot meals.¹²