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EU Green Deal’s food system agenda fails to deliver post-exceptionalist breakthrough

Nature Food volume 6, pages 563–570 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The European Commission’s Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies were widely praised as important steps towards a healthier and more sustainable EU food system. Although this agenda was seen by some as a leap towards increased post-exceptionalism in EU agri-food policy-making, recent political backlash against the Green Deal’s food system ambitions has called into question whether such a post-exceptionalist breakthrough has indeed occurred. Here, we systematically analyse recent shifts in EU agri-food governance across four dimensions of (post-)exceptionalism: ideas, institutions, interests and policies. Despite a diversification of food system sustainability concerns in policy debates, along with some institutional opening and broader consultations with interest groups, we show that policy transformations were very limited—leaving space for emerging political tensions and increasing pressure for deeper post-exceptionalist reform in EU agri-food policies.

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Acknowledgements

C.D. received funding for his research from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme within the OpenInnoTrain project under Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement number 823971. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies entirely with the authors. We thank G. Bazzan for constructive comments that helped us improve the paper.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Public Administration and Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands

    Jeroen Candel

  2. Department of Food and Resource Economics, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Carsten Daugbjerg

  3. Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia

    Carsten Daugbjerg

Authors
  1. Jeroen Candel
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  2. Carsten Daugbjerg
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Contributions

J.C. and C.D. both contributed to the conception, design and analysis of the study, as well as to the drafting of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jeroen Candel.

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C.D. declares no competing interests. J.C. is a member of Dutch Council on Animal Affairs.

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Nature Food thanks Gerry Alons, Jostein Vik and Pieter Zwaan for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary Tables 1–3.

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Candel, J., Daugbjerg, C. EU Green Deal’s food system agenda fails to deliver post-exceptionalist breakthrough. Nat Food 6, 563–570 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-025-01174-3

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