By Nicholas Hodac, Director General, UNESDA Soft Drinks Europe
One year since the launch of the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food, the European soft drinks sector asks the EU to turn its good intentions into action by removing outdated rules hindering innovation, making laws simpler and clearer and ensuring evidence-based policies that promote fairness across the entire food supply chain.
One year ago, Commissioner Christophe Hansen presented the EU Vision for Agriculture and Food – a bold plan to make the agri-food sector more competitive and innovative.
It is a vision built on strong intentions: simplifying legislation, fostering food innovation and strengthening collaboration across the entire value chain.
As part of this Vision, the European Commission committed to launching the Food Dialogues on reformulation and dietary intake data collection. This is an important platform to bring the whole food and drink industry together and drive progress collectively.
The Commission also confirmed that the voluntary approach under the EU Code of Conduct on Responsible Food Business and Marketing Practices will continue. That is a clear signal of trust and recognition that voluntary industry action delivers results.
Now, intent must translate into action because our businesses need to keep supporting jobs, investing, and innovating. This is critical. The European soft drinks sector is a leading innovator and a key contributor to the European economy. We support over 1.8 million jobs and generate €242bn in revenues across our European supply chain. We are a truly ‘Made in Europe’ sector: over 97% of our beverages are produced in Europe, and more than 85% of our ingredients are sourced from European farmers.
Recently, EU leaders unanimously agreed to boost competitiveness and continue to push ahead with the EU’s ambitious simplification agenda. As António Costa, President of the European Council, stated: ‘in 2026, Europe will deliver. […] We will [deliver] on competitiveness this year.’
We are eager to see action. While some progress has already been made with the simplification omnibus packages, the EU must now move faster and put concrete enablers in place without delay.
To support this, our sector has identified a few top priorities to drive faster EU action. We are calling for policies grounded in robust evidence. Legislation must also be thoroughly assessed to ensure it is fit for purpose. And it must promote fairness across the food supply chain, avoiding discrimination against any specific food, drink or ingredient, and recognising the importance of balanced diets and lifestyles.
We are also calling for the removal of outdated rules that lack technical or scientific justification, such as the 30% energy reduction rule restricting the use of low-/no-calorie sweeteners. By law, this rule only allows manufacturers to add a low or no-calorie sweetener to foods and drinks if the energy value has been reduced at least by 30%. This is a major barrier to innovation and to further sugar reduction.
At the same time, we are calling on the EU to make environmental rules simpler, clearer and more coherent, without lowering its green ambition. Too often, legislation is vague. A good example in the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) is the exemption from the restriction on single-use plastic grouped packaging for packaging ‘necessary to facilitate handling’, a term that is not defined anywhere.
We also need the EU to deliver clear secondary legislation and guidance on time. Setting targets first and only defining how to measure them years later simply does not work, as the experience with the Single-Use Plastics Directive (SUPD) has shown. Businesses are willing to comply, but they need clarity and predictability on how to meet the targets.
Our sector remains committed to delivering progress. We have consistently taken responsibility. The EU asked us to reduce sugar — and we were already doing so for years and long before any soft drink taxes were introduced. We also accelerated reformulation and expanded consumer choice to further support balanced diets.
The EU asked us to become more sustainable — and we stepped up again. We continue to invest heavily in sustainable operations, in protecting water resources and nature and in efficient collection and waste management schemes to advance packaging circularity.
We have engaged, we have taken action, we have delivered, and we have often gone beyond both EU’s targets and our own voluntary commitments. Now it is Europe’s turn to accelerate action and deliver.
We stand ready to keep engaging constructively and to keep doing our part. For a more competitive and innovative soft drinks sector. For a more competitive and innovative Europe.
