EU needs a common sustainable food systems framework, says Europe’s industry chief

*This article is part of a series of interviews on the expectations of all segments of the food supply chain regarding the EU’s agrifood policy for the next mandate.

The EU should provide food chain operators with a common framework for food systems that aligns all industry players towards sustainability, Dirk Jacobs, FoodDrinkEurope’s director general, told Euractiv in an interview.

FoodDrinkEurope, a Brussels-based lobby, represents some of the world’s largest food and beverage multinationals, including Mondelēz, Nestlé, Coca-Cola, and Unilever, and national business federations including small enterprises.

The sector stands as Europe’s largest manufacturing industry in terms of turnover and employment, according to the organisation.

The Commission presented its Farm to Fork Strategy (F2F) in 2020 as part of the Green Deal to make the EU’s food system greener, more sustainable and healthier, announcing a an EU-wide legal framework for a sustainable food system to ensure policy coherence among all environmental and climate initiatives.

However, the Commission never unveiled this proposal, as it faced regulatory fatigue from many economic sectors, particularly agri-food, by the end of its mandate.

“We didn’t have the Farm to Fork’s legislative framework on sustainable food systems,” Jacobs said. “Whether that process will continue is uncertain, but there is a need for a framework that sets everyone in the same direction on what we mean by sustainability.”

Jacobs criticised the Commission’s “top-down approach” to sustainable food policies during the 2019-2024 term. “It’s clear that pushing the Green Deal and Farm to Fork onto operators, farmers, or manufacturers is not working.”

He advocated for co-creating a system that rewards farmers and producers for investing in sustainability.

The rocky path towards sustainability

Big players in the food and beverage industry have shown support for certain sustainability efforts during the previous mandate, such as the contentious Nature Restoration Law.

However, this legislation would have little impact on the day-to-day operations of food companies, as meeting the law’s targets would primarily fall on national administrations, landowners, and farmers.

In contrast, Jacobs highlighted the challenges of implementing other environmental laws that directly affect the food industry, such as the EU’s anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR).

Coming into force in 2025, the EUDR requires European importers to prove that their products—including cocoa, coffee, livestock, and palm oil—do not come from deforested land.

Jacobs emphasised that “without guidance from the Commission,” implementation will be difficult.

Business operators, he said, “need to know what kind of IT systems to use, and what are the requirements that they have to ask their suppliers, as well as reporting requirements”. “This is a huge investment for companies.”

However, manufacturers such as Mondelēz, Nestlé, and Mars – members of FoodDrinkEurope – have also been criticised by NGOs for earning billions in profits in chocolate sales in 2023, while cocoa growers reap few benefits.

Similarly, FoodDrinkEurope opposed the overhaul of the EU’s packaging rules, often described as one of the most aggressively lobbied files of the current mandate, slamming the proposal as “unworkable” in November 2022.

“For many of those files, implementations should focus very much on helping operators,” Jacobs said.

New beginnings

However, the industry chief acknowledged the Commission’s shift from its previous unidirectional policy-making approach.

In January, the Commission launched a strategic dialogue on the future of agriculture, an initiative announced by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her annual State of the Union speech to address the agri-food sector’s backlash against the Green Deal.

Jacobs praised this initiative, which includes industry organisations like FoodDrinkEurope, consumer associations, environmental NGOs, and farming groups.

Nevertheless, he noted that this dialogue should have started when Farm to Fork was being crafted.

“A dialogue at the start would have helped to depolarise some discussions and created more co-ownership among different players,” he added.

The industry chief also called for better coordination among different Commission departments.

Much of the Green Deal legislation affecting the agri-food industry was handled by different commissioners and directorates.

For example, the Health and Food Safety Department drafted pesticide reduction rules, the Environment Department drafted packaging regulations, and the Agricultural Department handled geographical indications for food products.

“I’m speaking to Commission officials who acknowledge there is a need to better align within different departments and different directories,” said Jacobs.

To address this, he proposed a centralised role within the Commission that unites agriculture and food portfolios. This role, he added, should go “beyond a standard commissioner position” and be held by an executive vice president.

“Food is a strategic sector for the competitiveness of Europe, its sustainability and security, but also in terms of crisis, preparedness, and resilience”.

“It’s an absolute necessity to bring food higher onto the political agenda and to have better-coordinated policies,” he concluded.

[Edited by Angelo Di Mambro and Zoran Radosavljevic]

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