ETC CE Report 2025/4 Ambitions towards food waste prevention in the EU-27 Member States

06 Mar 2025

Nora Brüggemann, Jurate Miliute-Plepiene, Maja Dahlbom, Rosalyn Old, Elisabeth Pernmyr, Mads Werge

This report by the European Topic Centre on Circular Economy and Resource Use (ETC CE), assesses the ambitions in the European Union towards increased food waste prevention instead of food waste management. It reviews food waste actions and policy measures as of 2023 and categorises them according to the waste hierarchy which has been further developed as a guidance model in the form of a “food use hierarchy” by the JRC. 

The 332 actions by the EU-27 countries – collected from Member States and extracted from the EU Food Loss and Waste Prevention Hub (Hub) in the year 2023 – provide evidence of the ongoing efforts to fight food waste. Overall, the review also shows the willingness of EU-27 Member States to prioritise actions towards the higher levels of the food use hierarchy.