The European Commission published on 30 May its ‘White Paper on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity’, setting out ‘an integrated EU approach to contribute to ill health due to ill health due to poor nutrition, overweight and obesity’.

 

Reflecting the Commission’s stance in the EU Advertising Roundtable as well as the European Parliament’s resolution on ‘promoting healthy diets and physical activity’, the strategy argues in favour of ‘the existing voluntary approach at EU level due to the fact that it can potentially act quickly and effectively to tackle rising overweight and obesity rates.’ It also refers to the new Audiovisual Media Services Directive, directly linking the endorsement of industry work on self-regulation to the AMS call on Member States to encourage self- and co-regulation.

 

The White Paper recommends a very light-touch approach towards governing marketing, and does not call for restrictions. It does however reinforce the need for a European self-regulatory response for food advertising. It also calls on advertising self-regulation in Europe to achieve the ‘best practice’ standards as agreed as a result of the Advertising Roundtable process.

 

Overall, the White Paper reflects the significant progress that has been made in deepening SANCO’s understanding of and support for advertising self-regulation across Europe. It is a particularly important and positive development given the growing pressure on food/drink advertising globally, including at WHO and national levels in all regions.

 

The paper is a culmination of the three year consultation process that began in 2005 with the establishment of the EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health under Robert Madelin, and included the Commission consultation and EP report on the Green Paper on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. WFA and the Responsible Advertising and Children Programme were closely involved at all stages to stress the benefits of pragmatic, voluntary solutions.

 

In addition, the paper reflects the important SANCO-led work of the Advertising Roundtable process (late 2005 to May 2006), in which both the WFA and EASA played a key role in building DG SANCO’s support for advertising self-regulation. Within this process, WFA/EASA engaged constructively with all key stakeholders on advertising issues (including BEUC) to define and agree a ‘best practice’ model for effective self-regulation in Europe. This model serves as an important benchmark in the White Paper.

 

The Commission underlined the importance of developing accurate monitoring of the proposed actions and plans to carry a review of the overall strategy in 2010. No mandatory action is required at Member State level. The European Parliament is expected to express its view on this White Paper via an Own-InitiativeReport to be prepared it autumn 2007. The conclusions of the White Paper will be also discussed on 30May by the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council (EPSCO). WFA will continue to monitor this closely.

 

An analysis of the text highlighting the key points related to marketing has been sent to WFA Members. The full text is available for download below. For more information on this please contact m.lohan@wfanet.org