Ursula von der Leyen built her resilience case on the lesson Europe learned from energy dependency. She didn’t apply it to food. Yesterday’s State of the Union set out plans for a more competitive Single Market, simplification, stronger capital markets and a more resilient energy sector. Absent from all of it was the food system, one of the EU’s largest industrial ecosystems, and precisely the kind of sector exposed to import dependency and to shocks.
To back that resilience case, she announced a new Climate Insurance Alliance, a European Heatwave Plan and a water initiative, a set of concrete measures, built on a lesson Europe learned the hard way about depending on someone else for its energy. The same lesson is sitting there, unlearned, in how Europe sources its protein.
The same vulnerability, unaddressed
Europe still imports the protein used to feed its animals, primarily soy from South America, as well as fertiliser and feed additives. The Commission’s Protein Action Plan clearly states that the EU sources roughly 64% of its protein from animals and 36% from plants, which is the reverse of the global average. This dependency on external sources is a problem, and the same logic that the President applied to gas should be applied here: a Union that has learned what it costs to depend on someone else for power should recognise the same exposure in its food supply.
The President cited the fact that 660,000 hectares were burnt and around 12 million tonnes of crops were lost this summer, and announced measures relating to water risk and the insurance gap. While both are important, neither reduces exposure itself. Protein diversification does, however, by providing farmers with new income streams, lowering their input costs and making them less vulnerable to price shocks in the feed and fertiliser markets.
The missing chapter in the competitiveness agenda
This is also where the speech’s argument for growth had the most potential. According to an analysis by Systemiq, moderate policy support for the plant-based sector could generate 414,000 jobs and contribute €111 billion to the EU economy annually by 2040. These jobs would be created in crop production, processing and manufacturing, and would be concentrated in rural regions, which the President said she wants to keep viable. However, this case seems to remain outside the speech’s competitiveness chapter, which is built around scaling European companies, and there is no mention of one of the most ready-to-scale value chains.
As European Alliance for Plant-based Foods (EAPF), we have already put a figure on what unlocking it would take with our partners FoodConNext PBFE and EUVEPRO. In our publication The Plant-Based Opportunity, we called for the EU, Member States and regions to triple investment in plant-based research and innovation, mobilising €3 billion across 75 concrete projects by 2035, including seed breeding, processing infrastructure and on-farm technology, the foundation EAPF has told the Commission is necessary to add value across the chain. The Protein Action Plan recognised the need for investments. SOTEU was the moment to attach a number and a timeline to it, but it did not.
A Single Market working against itself
The gap between ambition and delivery is currently most obvious in the European Parliament. For the third time in six years, MEPs are pushing to restrict the naming of plant-based products, with a clause that would let each of the 27 Member States set its own rules to the ban, causing further fragmentation inside the Single Market.
What EAPF is asking for
A competitiveness agenda that omits one of its readiest growth sectors is incomplete. EAPF is calling on the Commission to deliver the dedicated EU Action Plan for the Plant-Based Foods Value Chain that the sector’s Partners for Plant-Based declaration, backed by over 100 businesses, networks and institutions, has already called for: concrete R&I investment with figures and dates attached, a Single Market that treats plant-based foods consistently across all 27 Member States, and a framework Member States can act on directly, as Denmark’s own national plant-based action plan already shows is possible.
The Alliance and its members are ready to scale. What is missing is the framework that supports them to do so.
