Level of food security in the EU is not uniform, report shows
The performances of both Mediterranean countries and Eastern Europe are lower than in Western and Northern Europe.
European countries performed differently in a study that measures the state of global food security, showing an internal discrepancy within the bloc that put Europe behind North America in the ranking of regions.
Developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Global Food Security Index highlights drivers and factors that affect food security in more than a hundred countries across the world.
Performances of countries are ranked in the index considering elements of the food system such as affordability, availability, quality and safety, as well as natural resources and resilience.
The ninth edition of the report, released on Tuesday (23 February), has confirmed the EU as the biggest concentration of food security leaders in the world.
The top 20 of the index includes eleven EU countries, with even Finland, Ireland and the Netherlands on the podium.
Despite these highest rank positions for single countries, Europe is just the second-best food security environment if considered as a region, being surpassed by North America in this year’s index.
“That’s because there is an internal discrepancy in the bloc,” Pratima Singh, the project lead for the index at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told EURACTIV.
The researcher explained that the level of food security in the EU is not uniform as the performances of both Mediterranean countries and Central and Eastern Europe are significantly lower than in Western and Northern Europe.
Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary are the lowest-ranked countries in the EU, getting respectively 44th, 40th and 36th place in the food security standings worldwide.
The issue of food security in Europe has been in the spotlight again after the Environment Commissioner Virginijus Sinkevičius argued recently that it is no longer a major concern for the EU.
The young Lithuanian Commissioner said other challenges are dominating the European food system, such as food waste, overconsumption, obesity and its overall environmental footprint.
