By Jeremy Smith

BRUSSELS, Sept 30 (Reuters) - EU agriculture ministers gave broad political support on Tuesday to a scheme offering millions of schoolchildren free fresh fruit and vegetables from next year as a way to promote healthy eating and tackle child obesity.

The scheme, proposed by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, earmarks 90 million euros ($128.8 million) a year in funding, with each EU country matching the amount of cash that it receives from Brussels. The EU plan would be voluntary.

"This will help to reverse the decline in consumption of fruit and vegetables and contribute to fighting the problem with child obesity, which can be described as an epidemic," Fischer Boel told the bloc's farm ministers at a regular meeting.

Many of the EU's 27 countries, notably Denmark, wanted to see even more money ploughed into the scheme, but a handful -- like Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands and Czech Republic -- were more reticent about the amount of EU cash involved and pointed to the benefits of nationally-funded plans, officials said.

"There isn't much opposition, just ironing out some details," one EU official told reporters.

Fischer Boel's plan, likely to be agreed by ministers next month, would give special status to economically poorer regions, with 75 percent of the cost financed by EU money. Countries would be able to top up the cash spent on their national plans.

Many EU countries already have fairly successful subsidised fruit and vegetable programmes in schools but others, such as in central and eastern Europe, lack such schemes.

The EU plan would apply from the 2009/10 school year.

One of its main aims is to halt the EU's alarming trend in obesity, especially among children. An estimated 22 million children in the EU are overweight. More than 5 million of these are obese and this figure is due to rise by 400,000 every year.

Another topic of debate was whether the school fruit and vegetables should primarily be locally grown or imported. Most countries' ministers said they preferred to use EU produce although this point will remain open for next month's debate.

"There was general consensus that this should be sourced from EU production," another official said. "In the north of Europe, fruit and vegetable production is seasonal so there would probably be a preference for southern European products."

Fischer Boel, stressing that the scheme had to comply with World Trade Organisation rules, said there seemed to be no WTO obstacle to limiting the choice to EU produce.

"However, I can see no reason why we should not allow, for example, our children to eat bananas from ACP (African, Caribbean and Pacific) countries if this choice is justifiable for health and educational reasons," she told the ministers.

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