Food and Alcohol Labelling

Created on 26th of August 2009   Last Modified on the 15th of November 2011

In February 2008 the Commission published a proposal for a regulation to re-cast and simplify existing EU and national legislation on the labelling of food. The draft regulation proposed mandatory nutritional labelling on the front of the pack. Derogations were provided for alcoholic drinks but the Commission will also produce a report and proposals on these within five years.

On behalf of UKTRF and other national associations, the European Travel Retail Council lobbied for two principal amendments:

1) That foods sold in a duty-free zone may be placed on the market with a form of words presented solely in English.

2) That gift packagings be exempt from the requirement to repeat the energy content on the front of the packaging.

Both of these amendments were accepted by the Parliament but were rejected by the Council of Ministers and by the Commission and any reference to language exemptions was removed from the regulation. It will now be up to each Member State to decide what languages it requires for the labelling of food under this regulation.

This is a prime example of the type of issue which the Espace Voyageur concept would address.

Printer Friendly Version

Choose preferred Font: (Arial|Times New Roman| Courier New)