Category: Food

A globe showing Europe and Africa laid out on dark grass to illustrate whether trade policy can be sustainable sustainable

The EU’s trade policy can be sustainable – and here is how

With the failure of the World Trade Organisation to address climate issues in trade, BEUC's Mykyta Sobko looks at how to tackle the pressing issues of sustainability and consumer concerns in trade policies.

/ March 14, 2024

How reliable is the EU Transparency Register?

Transparency is key to ensure citizens’ trust and accountability of EU institutions. To make it happen, the EU set up the Transparency Register. Yet as the European Ombudsman highlighted in a recent decision about obscure lobbying practices against the Nutri-Score...

and / February 21, 2024
A Santa dressed in green carrying a sleigh of recycled gifts

Green Santa is coming to town – a year clamping down on greenwashing

BEUC has been involved in fighting greenwashing for many years and 2023 was the year where we stepped up our game. We expanded our effort cross-teams, looking at different areas of consumers’ lives and how we can make them free...

What’s for lunch? Helping consumers make healthy and sustainable food choices

Consumers do not have a “free choice” of what foods they want to eat. The less healthy and less sustainable option is the widely available and often more affordable one. It's time to make the healthy and sustainable choice the...

/ October 20, 2023

Food Label Ambush: How intense industry lobbying halted EU plans

Countless meetings, disinformation and even threats of increased immigration… how lobbyists turned the Commission’s food information plans on their head – to the detriment of consumers.

/ October 9, 2023

Carbon-neutral food? Too good to be true

‘Carbon neutral’, ‘CO2 neutral’, ‘carbon positive’, ‘carbon neutral certified’. These days it’s difficult to miss these powerful claims on products and services when we’re shopping. The supermarket shelves are no exception: from bananas to pork, blueberries to milk, the variety...

/ July 5, 2023

Agricultural agreements cannot be a smokescreen for greenwashing and profiteering

Consumers are increasingly worried about the impact of their consumption, including the food they eat. But draft guidelines for the food sector could lead to minimal sustainability improvements as a pretext to restrict competition, writes Emanuela Antolovic.

/ June 20, 2023

The EU has made our food safer. Time to make it more sustainable.

From a patchwork of rules creating a single market, EU food legislation has evolved over the past forty years into a body of food safety and consumer protection laws. Now is time to take it to the next level so...

/ October 24, 2022

Nutri-Score now: the time to tackle the obesity crisis is well overdue

As it fights COVID-19, the EU cannot drop the ball on the obesity and overweight crisis. It is high time policymakers helped people shop for healthier products by making the Nutri-Score nutrition label mandatory.

/ May 18, 2020

Will the EU’s ambition towards a sustainable food system make it to the finish line?

As the European Commission is putting the final touches to its Farm to Fork Strategy for Sustainable Food, attempts to water it down are intensifying. Here is why the Commission must stick to its guns.

/ May 12, 2020