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In Europe your employer can't provide you with free food, it's value is counted as taxable income.

Europe is made up of 27 countries all with their own tax laws. You can't make generalisations like that without significantly more detail.

Here in the UK my employer can and occasionally, but not frequently enough in my opinion, does pay for my lunch.

There are 51 countries in Europe, if you count some technicalities around the Vatican, Monaco etc.

Though I suspect both yourself and the previous poster was referring to the European Union.