End supermarket food waste and cut food prices

Across Europe, the rising cost of food is not just a statistic—it's a harsh reality pushing countless families into poverty. Parents struggle to feed their children, students have to choose between heating and eating, and the elderly are forced to choose between medication and healthy meals.

Despite this, an astonishing 130 kg of food per person is wasted each year in Europe. Supermarket chains, the giants of food retail, are at the heart of this paradox. Food waste is a moral and political issue that cannot be ignored.

In Europe, families spend a large portion of their income on food, in some countries, this amounts to over half of their household budget. Meanwhile, many supermarkets continue to feed the waste bins without even considering donations to charities or cutting the food price before expiry dates.

Luckily countries like France, Spain, the Czech Republic, Poland, Romania and Lithuania have passed laws to fight food waste. They've made donating surplus food to charities mandatory, set binding waste reduction targets, and promoted campaigns to change customers’ habits.

We need laws fighting food waste all over Europe. Therefore, we call on the EU and its member states to:

• Require supermarket chains to donate to food banks and cut the food price before the expiry date

• Support the new proposal of the European Parliament to set binding targets for member states to reduce food waste and create a budgetary incentive to facilitate this endeavour
  

Initiator
Tomas Tomilinas, member of the Lithuanian parliament, Union of Democrats "For Lithuania"