European Parliament demands greater ambition

The European Parliament has today backed a report on reducing food waste. The report calls for a coordinated policy response and for the European Commission to introduce binding targets for food waste reduction. Davor Škrlec, shadow rapporteur for the Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament, welcomes the report's findings:

"This is a timely and welcome report. The European Court of Auditors has already shown that the European Commission’s ambition has been moving backwards. There now needs to be a coordinated policy response at both EU and Member States level, backed up with binding EU food waste reduction targets.

"EU policy makers need to reject the claims from the industrial agriculture lobby that only they can “feed the world”. It's clear that our first priority in delivering a sufficient and sustainable food supply should be massively reducing food waste. This should be our focus, not ever-increasing intensive and polluting methods of production."

Notes

The targets include: a call on Member States to take measures required to achieve an EU food waste reduction target of 30% by 2025 and 50% by 2030 compared to the 2014 baseline; a call on the Commission to examine the possibility of setting up binding Union-wide food waste reduction targets to be met by 2025 and 2030. The report also calls for the Council and Commission to designate a European year against food waste.