ECA axes Europe’s food labels: too many and confusing

Brussels – Clear and safe information? Informed choices? In food labels, the European Union still has a lot of work to do. In a dedicated report, the Court of Auditors of the EU flunks the European food labelling system. The reason? Shortcomings and grey areas, as well as a system that is far from consumer-friendly and consumer protection-friendly. Although much information is provided for the benefit of everyday shoppers, Luxembourg auditors note, “the EU legal framework has significant gaps and weaknesses in monitoring, reporting, control systems, and sanctions.”

There is, first of all, a legislative problem. There are currently four main regulations in the European Union that govern the information listed on food products, as well as several other regulations related to specific characteristics, such as place of origin or additives. Mandatory information includes expiration dates, allergens, net quantities, and storage details.
According to the ECA, in addition to this information, “some producers and manufacturers take advantage of the lack of harmonization of norms and standards to enter unsourced, often unverifiable and sometimes false information.”

Then, there is a practical problem, as Keit Pentus-Rosimannus, the ECA member in charge of the report, explains in a nutshell. “Approximately 450 million consumers in the EU are thus defenceless against deliberately or unintentionally misleading messages.” Because the EU is a veritable jungle when it comes to seeking information about food. Europeans are exposed to increasing claims, logos, slogans, labels and scores “that can not only be confusing but also misleading.” This also applies to the traffic light indication, better known as the “Nutri-score” that divides member states. In the EU, 15 member countries have given total freedom to manufacturers, without indicating any type of labelling for food. In 12 others, however, there are nationally recommended systems. Thus Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands use the traffic light system, Italy the battery system with indication in grams and percentage of calories, fat, sugar, and salt. Denmark, Lithuania, and Sweden, on the other hand, use an indication of the healthiest foods through a label depicting a keyhole. Finland uses a heart for everything considered good and healthy, and Croatia and Slovenia use a cloud and a balloon, respectively. All products that may end up on each other’s shelves because of the difficulty in understanding what these symbols might represent.

However, something is missing in this jungle, namely, what would really be needed. “Currently,” denounces the ECA report, there are no labels indicating the
processing
level of foods, even though scientific data suggest that consuming large amounts of ultra-processed foods increases the risk of developing food-related diseases.

Moreover, the report highlights “the lack of harmonization of rules on precautionary allergen labelling, the inadequacy of EU rules on legibility, and the absence of European rules on vegetarian and vegan labels,” for which there are no common standards. Hence, the call for the new European Commission to “urgently establish harmonized rules and regulations to alleviate consumer information problems.”