EU Commission sued for secrecy over ditched food label plan

Published on 16/09/2025 - 6:00 GMT+2

The European Commission faces questions implicit dropped plans to present mandatory nutrient labelling aft 2 nutrient NGOs - foodwatch planetary and Access Info - filed a lawsuit with the EU General Court claiming that the enforcement refused to disclose tenable accusation connected the scheme.

The inaugural to present mandatory front-of-packet labelling was portion of the broader Farm to Fork Strategy presented by the Commission successful 2020 and aimed to harmonise the nutritional accusation provided to consumers, but has since been softly dropped. 

“Why has the EU Commission silently buried its program to contiguous a Europe-wide nutrition statement arsenic planned successful the Farm to Fork strategy? What power does the nutrient lobby have?” asked Suzy Sumner, caput of foodwatch international's Brussels office. 

She said that fractional a cardinal European consumers person the close to know, astatine a glance, what's successful their food. 

Both organisations person submitted aggregate requests for entree to documents to the European Commission, seeking clarity connected the reasons down the withdrawal of the proposal. They requested the interior Impact Assessment, the Opinion of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, and minutes of related meetings concerning the legislative process. 

The Commission refused to stock the information, arguing that adjacent partial disclosure “would earnestly undermine its ongoing decision-making owed to the outer unit it stated would occur”. 

The lawsuit was besides reviewed by the European Ombudsman, who concluded that the Commission’s refusal constituted maladministration and that the reasoning for withholding the documents was inadequate.

“The requested documents are legislative successful nature,” said Carlos Cordero, President of Access Info. “According to case-law of the General Court of the European Union, specified documents are taxable to the highest level of transparency and the rule of the widest imaginable access. This standard, however, has not been applied to the Nutri-score documents." 

Access Info escalated the lawsuit to the EU’s General Court aft the Ombudsman’s judgment, aiming to overturn the Commission’s refusal and foodwatch International has present joined the case, which was filed with the tribunal past week. 

This lawsuit is simply a caller section of the long-standing feud implicit transparency successful the European Commission.  

Earlier this year, the EU’s apical tribunal annulled the Commission’s determination to contradict the New York Times entree to messages exchanged betwixt President Ursula von der Leyen and Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla astir COVID-19 vaccine contracts successful what became a pivotal case for organization transparency.