Is Ursula von der Leyen bringing the Nutri-Score food label and robots to the entire European Union? Sustainability is high on the agenda of the new European President and her team, and that means “consuming and trading differently”.
Climate and digitisation to the fore
Since 1 December, the European Commission has a new president: over the next five years, the German and her team will leave their mark on European policy, spearheading policies on climate and digitisation. This double challenge also finds its way into the retail and food sectors. On 11 December, Von der Leyen will announce the content of her ‘Green Deal’, which will contain the EU’s climate objectives and plans to achieve a climate-neutral Europe by 2050. Many of her views however, have already been leaked.
The most important thing, according to the President? “We have to change the way we produce, consume and trade”, she said at the time of her election. Clear attention is paid to nutrition: Von der Leyen sees food safety as part of the efforts to preserve the European natural environment, and therefore mentions it in the same breath as discussing challenges such as biodiversity, climate change, deforestation and soil degradation.
Sustainable – from farm to fork
“We need a sustainable strategy, from farm to fork. From young farmers being able to access capital, to the fact that imported food from external countries must meet the EU’s environmental standards”, Von der Leyen said recently.
The United Kingdom will also become such an external country after Brexit, which will require a wide range of additional certificates, packaging adjustments and control procedures covering both importing and exporting manufacturers. After all, the European Commission’s current ‘farm to food’ strategy focuses on protection of health and food safety, with a strong focus on the regulation and control of labels, health or nutrition claims, food hygiene and welfare.
Nutri-Score to go on all packaging?
Similarly, the EU supports the idea of a globally standardised system of packaging labels to indicate the nutritional value of the products. According to FoodNavigator, there is a good chance that the European Commission will start harmonising labels throughout the EU by 2020. It is quite likely that the Nutri-Score will be chosen for this, as this system is already in use in Belgium, France and Germany, among other countries, and the German Minister of Health, among others, previously called for an international implementation.
When it comes to new food products, the EU wants to be more open to innovation. This includes an online registration tool, broader food categories, and the option to obtain individual approvals for a period of five years on the basis of protected data. This way, the European Commission wants to encourage a more open and innovative approach when it comes to the production and promotion of food.
Catching up required in B2C
Innovation is also the common thread in the digitisation pillar, for which Margrethe Vestager will reassume her duties as Competition Commissioner over the next five years. She made a name for herself in the previous legislative period with major lawsuits against mega-multinationals such as Amazon, Facebook and Google. “We have to make our single market fit for the digital age, we need to make the most of artificial intelligence and big data, we have to improve on cybersecurity and we have to work hard for our technological sovereignty”, Vestager summed up her new ambitions.
“Digitalisation has a huge impact on the way we live, work and communicate. In some fields, Europe has catch up — like for business to consumers — while in others we are frontrunners — such as in business to business”, the Danish Commissioner said.
The fact that Ursula von der Leyen even sees opportunities for robotics to replace human labour is a striking claim: she wants to use robots to relieve people of work that is “too repetitive or too heavy”, so that they free up time for what computers cannot do: empathy and creativity. Will the new European Commission be opening the door not only to the Nutri-Score but also to far-reaching automation?
