September 20, 2007
Brussels cuts its appetite for legislation
Anyone wanting to learn what Brussels means by better regulation should look at its developing policy on nutrition and obesity.
Rather than hand down directives, the Commission’s health directorate (Sanco) in 2005 corralled food companies, lobbyists, scientists and campaigners into a discussion group and encouraged industry to make voluntary commitments to improve products, reduce advertising to children and so on.
Robert Madelin, the oracle of Sanco and architect of the approach, has just spoken again. Rare among Commission director-generals, Mr Madelin, schooled in the UK and France, is comfortable talking to the media and happy to be seen working with businesses.
When his political boss, Markos Kyprianou, invited companies to present their commitments on cutting fat and salt in products in the Commission’s press room, the journalist’s lobby group wrote to complain about misuse of “neutral” ground.
His latest offering comes once again via a podcast interview not with a journalist, but Eufic, an outfit funded by the Commission and the food and drink industry.
He is very proud of the so-called EU platform for action on diet, physical activity and health. When not uttering eurospeak – “It is a first that the Commission has formally proposed a multistakeholder tool of this sort of one key tool in its toolbox” - he talks sense.
He talks about into local communities, about building partnerships with companies, families and sports clubs, and looking longterm at complex problems. “Radical” is the word he uses. His reward is that the Commission has endorsed the approach the European parliament and member states are set to give approval too.
His ambition is that this collaborative approach with business is adopted across the Commission and national governments. “I would like to see this model picked up…as a possible tool to fix many problems. The involvement of more actors is crucial for the legitimacy of what we do. Often when we fail at European level it is because there are too few allies at the beginning."
They may reserve judgment for a while. As Mr Madelin himself says, while the platform has begun to change industry behaviour “it has not yet begun to reverse the trend in obesity prevalence”.
