EU law to consider citizens' recommendations on food waste

Specific recommendations include increased support for local farming, enhanced data sharing across Europe, mandatory reporting on business food waste and improved nutritional education in schools. It is estimated that the bloc wastes nearly 60m tonnes of food, worth €1.3bn, each year. 

The European Commission published proposals to revise the waste framework Directive with binding food waste reduction targets in July, referencing the citizens’ recommendations.

The panel represents the first concrete and structured contribution by citizens to the development of European political and legislative initiatives resulting from an exercise in participatory democracy.

The initiative is just one of an increasing number of similar programmes. Ireland’s Citizens’ Assemblies have had a number of notable successes, while the European Citizen Action Service (Ecas), ran a consultative exercise between January 2022 and January 2023 where ideas for air quality improvements were crowdsourced from citizens across 10 European cities. This emerging focus on participatory justice could, experts say, represent an important new tool in the EU policy toolbox.