European Citizens' Panel on food waste : have your say.
Date: 2024-04-21
Institutions: Directorate-General for Communication
Subjects: civil society, consumer information, fight against wastage, food consumption, foodstuff, waste management

European Citizens’ Panel  
food waste 

    Have Your Say

#FoodWasteEU

A New Generation of European 
Citizens’ Panels

What are the Citizens’ Panels?

Building on the success of the Conference on the Future of Europe, citizens’ panels are now part 
of the Commission’s policymaking in certain key areas. 

The purpose of such panels is to enable citizens to deliberate and make recommendations ahead 
of certain key proposals. 

The first Citizens’ Panel is deliberating on the Commission’s initiative on food waste.

Who will be in the panels?

Around 150 randomly selected citizens from the  
27 Member States.

Representative of the EU’s diversity: geographic origin 
(nationality and urban/rural), gender, age, socioeconomic 
background and level of education.

 1/3 of the panel are young people (ages 16-25).

© Unsplash

 
Food waste in the EU: What is at stake?

Nearly 57 million tonnes of food waste were generated in 2020 (127kg 
per person), with the associated market value estimated to be at €130 billion. 

Households represent a main hotspot, responsible for 55% of all food waste. 

Around 10% of food made available to consumers may be wasted. 

Furthermore, food waste accounts for about 5% of EU greenhouse gas 
emissions associated with the EU’s overall food consumption footprint.

© Adobe Stock

How to reduce food waste more effectively? 
The citizens’ perspective.

Citizens will be asked to formulate recommendations on what actions should be taken 
by EU Member States, citizens and other private and public stakeholders in order to 
step up the effort to reduce food waste.

What will be the outcome of the Panel?

The panel will provide a list of recommendations that will support the Commission’s work on food 
waste, including a legislative proposal to set EU food waste reduction targets, and serve as a guide 
to help Member States in achieving these targets.

How and when will it happen?

The citizens’ panel combines collaborative work in small groups of around 12 people working in  
5 different languages with plenary work with all the 150 participants together in 24 languages. 
To carry out this work, panelists are supported by a facilitation team and inputs by experts in the topic.

The panel will meet between December 2022 and February 2023.  

The first session will take place on 16th-18th December in Brussels, followed with an online session 
on 20th-22nd January. The closure session will be held on 10th-12th February in Brussels.

© European Union, 2022 
Reuse of this document is allowed, provided appropriate credit is given and any changes are 
indicated (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license). For any use or reproduction 
of elements that are not owned by the EU, permission may need to be sought directly from the 
respective right holders. All images © European Union, unless otherwise stated.

Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union, 2022 
Print 
PDF 

ISBN 978-92-76-60597-3   doi:10.2775/501257   NA-08-22-338-EN-C
  ISBN 978-92-76-60598-0   doi:10.2775/569216   NA-08-22-338-EN-N