The European Commission has officially registered the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) entitled “Food is a Human Right for All! Guaranteeing healthy, just and sustainable food systems.” The initiative calls on the EU to legally enshrine the right to food and address the systemic issues that fuel food insecurity and inequality. If it reaches one million validated signatures from at least seven Member States, the Commission is obliged to examine the proposal and decide on possible follow-up action.
This campaign highlights pressing concerns: rising food insecurity, unaffordable diets, unsustainable production models, and unjust distribution of profits along the food supply chain. According to the coordinators, by supporting this initiative, you are taking a stand against food insecurity and unfair food systems, and advocating for a just and sustainable food system for Europe. ECI offers a rare opportunity for EU citizens to shape policy at a fundamental level — by affirming the right to food as a cornerstone of dignity, sustainability and fairness. On 18 December 2026, the campaign promoters organized a webinar in which I had the opportunity to address the issue in why Europe needs a strong right to food framework.
This campaign highlights pressing concerns: rising food insecurity, unaffordable diets, unsustainable production models, and unjust distribution of profits along the food supply chain. According to the coordinators, by supporting this initiative, you are taking a stand against food insecurity and unfair food systems, and advocating for a just and sustainable food system for Europe. ECI offers a rare opportunity for EU citizens to shape policy at a fundamental level — by affirming the right to food as a cornerstone of dignity, sustainability and fairness. On 18 December 2026, the campaign promoters organized a webinar in which I had the opportunity to address the issue in why Europe needs a strong right to food framework.
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The state of the right to food in the European Union presents a paradox. In terms of availability, the EU does not face a structural problem. The prevalence of undernourishment remains below 2.5 percent, confirming that food supply and production are sufficient.
These access constraints directly affect nutritional adequacy. In the EU, 8.3 percent of the population was unable to afford a meal containing meat, fish or a vegetarian equivalent every second day, an this shows that cost remains a major barrier to adequate and nutritious diets. FAO data consistently show that affordability is a key determinant of diet quality.
Finally, while food supply remains stable, the stability of access is increasingly fragile for low-income and vulnerable groups in Europe. Inflation and economic shocks have undermined households’ ability to maintain consistent access to adequate food over time.
In short, in the EU the right-to-food challenge is not availability, but ensuring equitable, affordable, nutritious and stable access for all.
And here is the bad news. There is a significant legal gap in Europe when it comes to the right to food.
All EU Member States have ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. This creates clear and binding human rights obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to adequate food. In theory, this should be reflected in strong national laws and clear accountability mechanisms.But this is not the case.
No European constitution explicitly protects the right to food, and most countries still lack comprehensive legal frameworks that would allow individuals to claim this right or seek remedies when it is violated. Where protections exist, they are often indirect, fragmented, or limited to emergency or social assistance measures.
At the regional level, the gap becomes even more evident. The right is not explicitly protected in the European Convention on Human Rights. As a result, protection remains partial and indirect, rather than explicit and better enforceable.
At EU level, the focus has traditionally been on agriculture, food production, food safety and the functioning of markets. While these policies are important they are designed primarily around economic efficiency and consumer protection, not around food as a human right. The right to food is not explicitly recognized in EU primary laws, and it remains largely absent from the EU’s legal and policy framework. Almudena wills say later more things about this.
At the same time, we must recognize that not everything is totally doom. There have been some concrete advances too. In Italy, the region of Lombardy adopted the first explicit Right to Food law in the European Union in 2015, recognizing it as a fundamental right and placing it at the center of regional food and social policies. In Germany, the Constitution guarantees a minimum subsistence level derived from human dignity, which has been interpreted to include access to food. Germany has also made the right to food a core pillar of its external development cooperation. Spain offers another strong example. Recent legislation, including the Waste and Circular Economy Law and the School Feeding Law, integrates right-to-food principles into food systems and social protection. The right to food is also a pillar of Spain’s development , and the Right to Food Observatory plays an active role in monitoring and policy dialogue. We could mention many other concrete examples across the European Union: strengthened social protection systems, school meal programmes, food waste legislation, local food policies and nutrition strategies that eflect right-to-food principles.
A major milestone was reached in October 2024, when the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe unanimously adopted a resolution on the right to food. The resolution recommends that Member States integrate the right to food into their national constitutions and calls for the development of a European normative framework to guarantee this right for all.
Taken together, these developments show both the scale of the gap and the direction of travel: strong international commitments, emerging national practices, and a clear need for a coherent European legal framework on the right to food.
Also is good to keep in mind that even if the right to food is not explicitly recognized as an autonomous right in the European legal framework, European courts have sometimes addressed and enforced it through binding jurisprudence, in particular through the case law of the European Court of Human Rights.
As shown in the recent analysis we did with the University of Antwerp under the guidance of Professor Tomaso Ferrando, the European Court of Human Rights has examined food-related deprivations mainly under Article 3 of the European Convention, which prohibits inhuman or degrading treatment.
In Stepuleac v. Moldova, the case concerned a detainee held for months with insufficient food. The Court held that the lack of adequate food contributed to degrading treatment in violation of Article 3. In Korneykova and Korneykov v. Ukraine, the applicants were a detained breastfeeding mother and her newborn child who received insufficient and inappropriate food. The Court found that the failure to meet their specific nutritional needs amounted to a violation of Article 3. In Stanev v. Bulgaria, the case concerned a man confined for years in a social care institution, where food was insufficient and of poor quality. The Court ruled that the overall living conditions, including inadequate food, constituted degrading treatment.
This jurisprudence is extremely important because talking about human rights necessarily means talking about accountability and justiciability. Without judicial scrutiny and enforceable remedies, rights remain mere promises.
So…Why Europe needs a strong right-to-food framework?
The Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Food clearly define what the right to food entails: not only freedom from hunger, but regular, permanent and dignified access to adequate food, through availability, accessibility, adequacy and stability, guided by accountability, participation and non-discrimination.
The advantage of implementing this framework in Europe is precisely that it can move food policy from fragmented responses to coherent, preventive action.
A right-to-food approach helps States identify risks early, protect vulnerable groups before crises escalate, and address structural drivers of food insecurity like affordability, inequality and exclusion — even in contexts, like Europe, where food is widely available.
Legally recognising the right to food also brings clarity and coherence. It can help aligning agricultural, social, health, environmental and market policies under a single human-rights objective, as explicitly recommended by the Voluntary Guidelines. This reduces policy contradictions and strengthens governance across food systems.
Most importantly, a rights-based framework strengthens accountability without relying on litigation alone. This improves transparency, trust and effectiveness.
In short, recognising the right to food is not an added burden for Europe — it is a tool for better policy, better prevention and better outcomes, more democracy and more equity and equality.
