By: Berta Redondo
From: Europatat (European Potato Trade Association)
On 7 and 8 November, the European Commission organised in Brussels the annual meeting of the EU Platform for Food Losses and Waste. WASTELESS, through the attendance of our partner Europatat, was present in the meeting on 7 November 2023 afternoon.
In the agenda, several speakers from both the EU and non-EU organisations presented the latest developments on projects and initiatives related with food waste. For instance, the OECD informed participants about their stocktaking exercise of food loss and waste policies which is expected to be publicly available in September 2024. A representative from the World Resources Institute (WRI) presented their annual progress report, which points out that more governmental action is needed; that companies need also to engage with suppliers and provide them technical and financial assistance; and that farmers need to implement improved management practices to reduce on-farm and near-farm losses. Regarding the 10x20x30 initiative, the WRI indicated that 223 companies participating globally have adopted a 50% FLW reduction goal. More information can be found here.
Regarding the Commission’s proposal to amend the Waste Framework Directive adopted in July 2023 establishing mandatory targets for Members States to reduce food waste by 2030 (by 10% in processing and manufacturing; by 30% (per capita) jointly at retail and consumption), Commissions officials reported that the file is now in hands of the co-legislators: While the European Parliament’s rapporteur on the file is suggesting to postpone the targets by 5 years (to 2035) and some MEPs ask for coherence with the revision of the Packaging and Packaging Waste regulation; some countries at the Council question the absence of targets for the primary production. Given the busy agenda in Brussels, there are serious concerns regarding whether the dossier can be finished before the end of the current EU mandate (elections in June 2024).
All the speakers presentations and a recording of the meeting are available on the EU FLW Platform’s webpage.
Economic issues are important to be examinated, but in the meeting with European Citizens’ Food Waste Panel they were considered too much (in my opinion) as a “justification” to not reasonably try the implementation of some of the Panel recommendations.
The economical situation we are now facing in Europe is making things more ‘complicated’. Probably they do not know how to implement yet as the economical situation is still difficult to predict.