2026-02 EU Council meeting on the single market and EU competitiveness

Following yesterday’s informal EU Council meeting on the single market and EU competitiveness, EU Specialty Food Ingredients welcomes Member States’ focus on creating a favourable regulatory environment, simplifying EU regulatory burden, protecting strategic industries, and reducing dependencies. We also appreciate the efforts towards fostering a more conducive investment framework, prioritising innovation, and enhancing industrial synergies to support scale-up.

The Agri-Food Sector represents the cornerstone of EU identity, economic resilience, and international representativeness, as well as innovation capacity; and is looking forward to seeing what’s next.

The agri-food manufacturing sector generates approximately 1.2 trillion euros in annual turnover and positions the EU as the world’s leading exporter of processed agricultural products. Specialty food ingredients play a vital role in the food manufacturing industry by driving innovation, improving processed foods with both technological and nutritional benefits, and addressing specific dietary needs through advanced and sustainable solutions.

We encourage EU Institutions and Member States to actively collaborate with all agri-food stakeholders to develop policies and initiatives that drive competitiveness, innovation, resilience, and sustainability in EU food systems.

More information can be found in our Recommendations for Competitive, Innovative, Resilient, and Sustainable EU Food Systems.