How are green U-turns in Europe affecting the food and beverage sector?

There was a time when the EU declared its intention to lead the world in green legislation and initiatives.

Although the intent might remain, a number of high-profile green U-turns appear to have tainted the vision.

The importance of food security throughout the globe cannot be understated, as climate change and weather extremes place increasing pressure on land and crops.

A number of recent reports place 2024 at the head of a year of record-breaking extreme weather, temperature and rainfall events, with a consequent impact on food production – from floods to wildfires, drought to extreme high temperatures. The food industry has almost certainly never before faced so many challenges from so many different directions.

Torn between rewilding, pressure on wildlife, rising input costs, uncertain returns and a plethora of environmental and climate change regulations, it is little wonder that recent months and years have seen the pushback in the EU food and beverage industry that is beginning to tarnish the EU’s green world-leadership ambitions.

This is important in the fight against so-called greenwashing (making environmental claims for products and services that are inaccurate, or misleading) which affects all industries negatively, including the food and beverage sector, and which risks disaffecting consumers, and turning them against necessary green actions. It is also important because the review of the Directive came after months of successful efforts by the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) to weaken EU environmental rules, including pesticide bans, deforestation laws and vehicle emission targets – all of which directly impact the food and beverage industry. 

In February 2025, the European Commission proposed an omnibus bill that would exempt 80% of EU firms from mandatory sustainability reporting, with the potentially devastating impact on corporate accountability. Whilst this affects all business sectors, yet again the fallout is likely to disproportionally affect the food and beverage industry which relies on its consumers being able to compare sustainability performance between companies. Genuine competitive advantage based on sustainability credentials is the potential casualty.

Taking place during an EU election year, the action saw environmental protection fall victim to political expediency: junking plans to cut pesticide use, scrapping a strategy on sustainable food systems, and looser environmental and labour requirements that farmers must respect to access farming subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Greenpeace, the climate action campaign, in February 2025, decried the European plans for the European agri-food industry as doing ‘little to curtail the environmental, climate and socioeconomic threats facing most farmers’ and ignoring ‘the findings of the Commission’s own advisory group.’

Whilst all of this leaves the EU food and farming strategy, as well as its wider green agenda, in tatters, it is the food and beverage sector that will often bear the brunt of the impacts.