The Potential Threats of Euroscepticism in an Evolving World of Food

Edward Chapman December, 2024

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Europe faces unprecedented pressures to its food ecosystem. With looming environmental threats, Europe needs to adapt in the way it produces food, while simultaneously avoiding risks to public health. The European Union, which has robust, binding food regulations on member states, and is replete with agencies to gather information and create policy, is well equipped to meet these challenges. However, Eurosceptic movements across Europe[1] may undermine the force of the E.U. in adapting to a new food ecosystem. As seen by the robust food regulations in the U.K., post-Brexit, Euroscepticism does not necessarily imply food deregulation. But, given that Brexit is not the only manifestation of Euroscepticism, the regulatory future of Europe’s food ecosystem remains uncertain.

Particularly since Brexit, the future of the EU’s existence has been put into question. Opinion polls of Europeans demonstrate decreasing levels for staying in the EU (fewer than half of citizens in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic support remaining).[2] Eurosceptic political parties have increasingly gained influence, rendering the possibility of additional exits.[3]

Simultaneously, the landscape of how Europeans produce and consume food has undergone a tidal shift in recent decades. Dietary risks, particularly obesity, remain one of the largest factors that increase the risk of developing disease. This creates a large and growing burden on public health.[4] Food consumption, particularly of meat and dairy, is responsible for 20-30% of the environmental burdens of total consumption.[5] Further, the health of European soil is deteriorating, creating major threats to food security, biodiversity, and human health.[6]

To address these growing threats to public health and the environment, the European Union, vis-à-vis agencies such as the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), have taken a front seat in research and policymaking. The EFSA implements procedures to “search for, collect, collate, and analyze data” to identify emerging risks in food production.[7] In an era where foods with modified molecular structures, and foods derived from insects, microorganisms, fungi, and algae, have entered Europe, the EFSA plays an essential role identifying and characterizing hazards linked to novel foods.[8] In a food production landscape with decreasing soil nutrients, and an unsustainable impact on biodiversity and water resources, alternative proteins have been seen as a potential solution.[9] Agencies of the EU, not only the EFSA, but also the European Center of Disease Control (ECDC), the European Chemical Agency (ECHA), and the European Environmental Agency (EEA), are essential in not only manifesting the necessary transition in food production, but making sure it is risk free.[10]

The European Parliament also plays a key role in addressing the threats that could jeopardize European food consumption. Regulation (EU) 2021/2115, for instance, creates standards designed to protect water resources, improve soil nutrition and fertility, and reduce pesticides which harm human health.[11] This regulation requires member states to create standards, support farmers, and establish agricultural practices.[12] The EU has created a robust framework of stringent food regulations, including strict labeling requirements, rigorous safety limits for additives, and the prohibition of certain substances from foods.[13] Such stringent regulations likely contribute to European countries ranking highly in the Global Food Security Index, which measures affordability, availability, quality and safety. In the twelve highest ranked countries, only Japan, Canada, and the United Kingdom are non-EU members.[14]

With this backdrop of stringent European food regulations, and EU bodies designed to address novel challenges in the European food ecosystem, what does Euroscepticism signify for the future of food? In light of Brexit, there is a basis to avoid pessimism. However, it would be naïve to assume that other exits from the EU would follow Britain’s lead.

The United Kingdom has largely retained the same stringent standards in food regulation since leaving the European Union. Post-Brexit, the United Kingdom passed the European Withdrawal Act, which ended the supremacy of EU law over British domestic law.[15] However, this by no means signified the end of EU food regulations over Britain. First and foremost, the Withdrawal Act converted pre-Brexit EU legislation into U.K. domestic law.[16] The EU-UK Withdrawal Agreement also included The Protocol on Northern Ireland, which subjected goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland to EU customs, effectively requiring part of the U.K. to obey EU regulations.[17] Further, the UK entered the UK-EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA), which established a trade framework, including a mutual commitment to high food safety standards.[18] Consequently, the departure from the European Union has not created a wild west in U.K. food regulation. The U.K., while still facing the same challenges as greater Europe, maintains a robust framework of food regulation, largely mirroring the EU. This has also led the U.K.’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) to take on a much larger role since leaving the EU.[19] The FSA plays a critical role in gathering evidence to identify food risks, and creating policy around food production.[20] In light of Brexit, it does not appear that Euroscepticism is a death sentence for food safety.

However, it is not a foregone conclusion that Brexit is the blueprint for all potential EU exits. While the UK retained many of the EU food regulations, not all exits would necessarily do so. If Poland were to exit the European Union, it is under no legal obligation to maintain the same stringent regulations as the EU. Neither is Hungary, Italy, the Czech Republic, or any other European country for that matter. A fragmented Europe, with a patchwork of food regulations, would face serious obstacles around introducing novel foods into supply chains, ensuring the health of soil, and producing food in a sustainable manner. The EU states are not islands. They are neighbors, with shared supply chains, and environmental externalities that spill across borders. Increased hostility toward EU food regulation could create a coordination problem in addressing the imminent threats to the food ecosystem in Europe.

The China-ASEAN trade relationship, reflected in the Chapeau of the Memorandum of Understanding Between ASEAN and China on Strengthening Sanitary and Phytosanitary Cooperation (MOU) provides an “soft law” model, which embodies the coordination problem a disunified Europe could face.[21] While all parties share the common interest of food-safety, “different levels of economic development and legal environment lead to different mindsets about the cooperation.”[22] The agreement suffers from ambiguous terms and a lack of dispute settlement mechanisms.[23] ASEAN countries suffer from diminishing land resources, land degradation, soil erosion, water scarcity, deforestation, and unsustainable farming practices, which all contribute to an increasingly insecure food ecosystem.[24] The MOU, without the force and consistency of EU food regulations, is not as well-equipped to address imminent threats. Euroscepticism, and a push to deregulation and defanging of supranational organizations, could create a similar coordination problem.

  1. Eurosceptic movements range from “objection to EU policies and direction” to “opposition to the very idea of European integration,” often rooted in “ a belief that freer transnational economic exchange in general and immigration in particular are exacerbating economic insecurity and cultural disruption.” Gráinne de Búrca, Is E.U. Supranational Governance A Challenge to Liberal Constitutionalism?, 85 U. Chi. L. Rev. 337, 347–348 (2018). European parties on the radical left and radical right, which have become increasingly mainstreamed, tend to be Eurosceptical. See Nicolo Conti, National political elites, the EU, and the populist challenge. 38(3) Politics. 361, 371 (2018). In 2019, the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD), a Eurosceptic group within the European Parliament, had 42 members, affiliated with parties such as the United Kingdom Independence Party (Great Britain), the Five Star Movement (Italy), Order and Justice (Lithuania), and Sweden Democrats (Sweden). Daniel Stockemer & Abdelkarim Amengay, The 2019 Elections to the European Parliament: The Continuation of a Populist Wave but Not a Populist Tsunami, 58 J. Common Mkt. Stud. 28, 34–35.↑

  2. Artur Roland Kozłowski, Grzegorz Krzykowski, Grahame Fallon, Clustering of Polish Citizens on the Bases of Their Support for Leaving and Remaining the European Union. 52 Polish Pol. Sci., 51. (2023).↑

  3. Id.↑

  4. Food Standards Agency (FSA), Food You Can Trust, FSA Strategy 2022-2027 10 (2022).↑

  5. Bruno Notarnicola, Giuseppe Tassielli, Pietro Alexander Renzulli, Valentina Castellani, S. Sala, Environmental impacts of food consumption in Europe, 140 J. of Cleaner Production 753, 754 (2016).↑

  6. European Soil Data Center (ESDAC), The State of Soils in Europe, at 10 (C. Arias-Navarro, R. Baritz, A. Jones eds., 2024), available at https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2760/7007291, JRC137600.↑

  7. G. Gkrintzali, M. Georgiev, R. G. Matas, A. Maggiore, C. Merten, A. Rortais, R. Giarnecchia, R. Tobin, B. Bottex, and European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), EFSA’s activities on emerging risks in 2021, at 4 (2023).↑

  8. Ermolaos Ververis, Reinhard Ackerl, Domenico Azzollini, et. al., Novel foods in the European Union: Scientific requirements and challenges of the risk assessment process by the European Food Safety Authority, 137 Food Research Int’l., 2-3 (2020).↑

  9. Food Standards Agency (FSA), Supra, note 3, at 17.↑

  10. G. Gkrintzali, supra note 6, at 5.↑

  11. Council Directive 2021/2115, art. 31, 2021 O.J. (EC).↑

  12. Id.↑

  13. George Asiamah, Divorced but co-habiting: a co-evolutionary perspective on EU-UK regulatory nexus post-Brexit, J. of Eur. Integration, at 6 (2024).↑

  14. Global Food Security Index 2022, Economist Impact (2023).↑

  15. Asiamah, supra note 12, at 7.↑

  16. Id.↑

  17. Id. at 8.↑

  18. Id.↑

  19. Food Standards Agency (FSA), Supra, note 3, at 2.↑

  20. Id. at 15, 17.↑

  21. See Yi Lu, Challenges in China – ASEAN Food Safety Cooperation Governance through Soft Law, 3 Peking u. trans nat’l. l. rev. 141, 145 (2015).↑

  22. Id. at 146.↑

  23. Id. at 146, 149↑

  24. Pushpanathan Sundram, Food security in AEAN: progress, challenges and future, 7 Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 1, 3 (2023).↑