Legislative food environment policy powers in the European Union: Who may act?

Abstract Background Public health nutrition policy spans diverse areas. In the European Union (EU), legislative powers are distributed across multiple government levels - EU, national and sub-national. While the degree of decentralisation within Member States varies, the distribution of competences between the EU and Member States is uniform. We have developed a methodology to analyse legislative powers for food environment policies in multi-level governance systems and applied it to the EU. Methods Our approach is based on the INFORMAS-Food-EPI and entails three steps: (1) qualitative content analysis of EU treaties, directives, Member State legislation, academic literature and government publications; (2) key informant interviews with legal scholars (n = 5); and (3) consultations with stakeholders from public administration, civil society and academia (n = 17). Results We distinguish four types of legislative power: primary, shared, supporting and limited/no power. Both the EU and Member States have relevant powers to support a healthier food environment. The EU holds primary legislative power, for example, in the area of food composition and labelling, grounded in their internal market and consumer protection competence (Art. 4(2) TFEU). Here, Member States have supporting powers and may only act in the absence of EU harmonisation (Art. 2(2) TFEU). Taxation, by contrast, is primarily a national competence, with EU-level constraints - minimum VAT (15%), two reduced rates (≥5%) and a 0% rate for essential goods, incl. food (Art. 98-99 Council Directive 2006/112/EC). Certain domains, e.g., monitoring and surveillance, are a shared competence of EU and national governments. Conclusions Defining legislative powers can help to avoid diffusion of responsibilities in multi-level governance systems. Understanding the powers of the EU and Member States can facilitate coherent policy design by identifying untapped potential for public action to support a healthy food environment. Key messages • EU and Member States hold relevant food environment policy powers. • Understanding them is necessary to avoid responsibility diffusion and enable coherent food environment policies.