Aspects of the corporate financial governance of food retail chains in selected V4 member countries and its possible spillover into the area of food poverty

The concept of supporting socially disadvantaged population groups is not new and has a tradition in both the core countries of the EU, as well as in newer one. However, there are new challenges the European society have to face, whether it was a pandemic of a new type of coronavirus or the current war of Russia against Ukraine. People suffering from a lack of quality food with regard to individual nutritional needs are more likely to be af-fected by chronic diseases, and a lack of food is also associated with many adverse effects on the overall health of the population, or the threat of an increase in socio-pathological manifestations in human society. Food banks then, as specific purpose entities, play an important role within the so-called safety net that serves for immediate, time-limited as-sistance to the groups of the population most affected by the food poverty. We employ in our explorative study both market data on price development of one of the basic foodstuff – butter as a processed milk product and also corporate micro-financial data of food re-tailers from selected Visegrad 4 member countries, namely Czechia, Hungary and Poland to explore relationships between consumer prices development and financial performance of food retail sector. The search for a solution to deal with the existence of food insecurity in Europe in the long run must definitely be anchored in a more comprehensive and sys-tematic approach. This article traces the research gap in addressing food poverty by focus-ing specifically on a partial role of food retail chains in the newer EU member countries in a light of unprecedented food price inflation and the resulting scale of demand for the services of food banks and other similar types of charities and food donation initiatives.