The Council in charge of Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer affairs (EPSCO) reached political agreement, at first reading, on a draft regulation on food information to consumers. This new piece of legislation is aimed to ensure that food labels carry essential information in a clear and legible way, enabling herewith consumers to make informed and balanced dietary choices.

The European Commission submitted in February 2008 a proposal for a Regulation on the provision of food information to consumers, aiming to update the European Union rules applicable to food labelling and to merge existing Directives applicable to labelling in general and to nutrition labelling into one single Regulation. As a result of the legislative process, one of the key elements now agreed by the Council in first reading is the mandatory nature of the nutrition declaration, which means that the labelling of the energy value and the quantities of some nutrients (fat, saturates, carbohydrates, protein, sugars and salt) will now become compulsory.

The draft Regulation establishes that energy values and the amounts of nutrients must be clearly expressed in the package, either with the amount per 100g or per 100ml, or indicated as a percentage of reference intakes. Any additional form to express it must be as clear as possible and never mislead consumers. These information must appear together in the same field of vision, and can also be repeated on the front of pack.

Labelling rules for the country of origin now become stricter and are compulsory for several types of meat such as porc, lamb, and poultry. In addition, these rules might also become for more products such as milk, milk used as an ingredient, meat used as an ingredient, unprocessed foods, single-ingredient products, or ingredients that represent more than 50% of a food, should a report issued by the Commission in the next three years advise to do so.

Certain alcoholic beverages such as wines, products derived from aromatized wines, mead, beer, spirits, but not alcopops are exempted from nutrition labelling rules as well as from the indication of the list of ingredients. In any case, the Commission will examine within five years after the entry into force of the new regulation if this exemption is still justified.

Non-prepacked food would also be exempted from nutrition labelling, unless member states decide otherwise, and allergens, however, must always be indicated.

The Council has also fixed a minimum font size for the mandatory information on the labelling which, added to other criteria, such as contrast, is aimed to ensure the legibility of the labels.

The text of the political agreement reached by the Council will now be reviewed legally and linguistically before it is formally adopted at one of the forthcoming Council session as its first-reading position. This text would then be forwarded for second reading to the European Parliament, who already adopted its first-reading position on 16 June 2010.