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28th Mar 2024

Brussels takes soft line on 'frightening' obesity problem

Gentle political pressure on food multinationals and EU states is Brussels' answer to Europe's bulging obesity problem until 2010, with consumer groups saying the Barroso commission is passing the buck to its successor.

Health commissioner Markos Kyprianou on Wednesday (30 May) unveiled a new fat-fighting strategy paper that envisages a directive by end-2007 on user-friendly nutritional food labeling but no other legislation for now.

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  • The EU is getting fatter, but the commission says it's up to member states and parents to tackle the problem (Photo: EUobserver)

The paper also calls for a new "working group" of EU member states' officials to help pool national ideas on how sport, education, transport and health policies can help Europeans fight flab.

On top of this, NGO groupings such as the 2005-launched EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health will lobby industry to reduce fat and salt content and fall in line with voluntary codes of conduct on advertising to children.

The strategy is in effect a continuation of the commission's existing approach for the past two years, which Mr Kyprianou hailed as a "success" because it has raised public awareness of the problem around Europe.

He indicated that tougher legislation from Brussels or EU states - which have so far failed to give the EU wide-ranging powers in the health sector - could be put in place after 2010 if industry self-regulation does not work.

"I don't want to sound threatening, I want to sound encouraging," the commissioner said.

He blamed European consumers and Brussels' legal limitations for not taking a tougher line straight away. "One has to take into account...the legal reality in the EU, our competency," Mr Kyparianou said.

"If the consumers didn't buy it, the industry wouldn't make it, so it's a question for both sides."

Frightening figures

Brussels' rhetoric on the scale of the problem contrasts to its softly-softly approach. Mr Kyprianou said child obesity rates are "frightening" and called the phenomenon "the greatest health challenge of the EU...in the 21st century."

Despite the profile-raising "success" of the past two years, the commission's own figures show 400,000 children a year are joining the ranks of 22 million overweight or obese schoolchildren in the EU.

Half of all EU adults - 200 million people - are overweight, putting themselves at greater risk of diabetes, heart failure and psychological disorders, with the Czech republic, Malta and Greece rating the worst in Europe.

The cost of obesity to the public purse is 7 percent of the total EU spend on healthcare - a figure well over €50 billion, at a time when EU financiers are already scratching their heads on how to meet future pensions costs.

Passing the buck

European consumer organisation BEUC took Brussels to task for its "minimalist response," saying the food industry's bad faith "makes it harder to be a good parent."

"Reading the white [strategy] paper it seems that Mr Kyprianou and the Barroso commission have already decided to leave much of the work to their successors," BEUC chief Jim Murray said.

"Like many slimming regimes the white paper is built on false hopes and unrealistic expectations," he added.

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