EU Work Programme: Scrapping safeguards to serve corporate interests
- politics and law
- Transparency and food safety
The EU Commission’s 2026 Work Programme and the announced omnibus on food safety put corporate interests over consumer safety. foodwatch warns that scrapping food protections endangers public health and trust.
Over the past weeks, the European Commission released its annual work program for 2026 and announced the first steps in what it calls a ‘simplification’ proposal on food and feed safety (the so-called omnibus on food and feed safety).
This initiative is not a ‘simplification’ exercise but a deliberate destruction of vital food safety protection to please big agribusiness and corporate interest.
The priorities of the European Commission are clear: Competitiveness at any price. Veiled promises to protect farmers, when the real winners from this deregulation surge in industry, and industry alone. The work program proposes very few food-related initiatives when compared to the number of important issues that require EU-wide action. The document also omits initiatives announced in the EU vision for agriculture and food earlier this year.
The Commission claims to introduce measures that “simplify life for people”. “In reality, the proposed measures open the gateway to a corporate takeover of food policy. Scrapping protections on food safety, pesticides or additives will not make anyone’s life simpler — only more exposed to health risks and food scandals. Europe’s citizens deserve stronger safeguards, not fewer.International Senior Campaigns Strategist
What’s missing from the Work Programme
- Action against food fraud and scandals, which continue to undermine consumer safety and trust.
- A ban on exporting pesticides that are illegal in the EU but return via imported food and reducing overall pesticide use
- The long-promised EU-wide front-of-pack nutrition label, quietly dropped from the agenda.
- The announced study on ultra-processed foods, absent from the current plan.
- Commitment to enforce existing food safety rules on contaminants, additives and pesticides.
The work programme was published just a couple of weeks after the Commission launched a call for evidence on its omnibus for food and feed safety. The emphasis is on easing market access for companies without acknowledgement of the need to increase protection levels for consumers and ecosystems.
The omnibus initiative is also problematic from a democratic point of view, because the commission plans to open highly complex regulations based on very minimal details and without further public consultations in the future.
Europe’s laws have made our food safer and cleaner — but instead of strengthening their implementation, the Commission is now destroying protections that entire generations fought for.International Senior Campaigns Strategist
foodwatch calls on the European Commission and Member States to stop this corporate-driven dismantling of public protections and to restore the EU’s commitment to consumer safety, transparency, and the public interest.