Why sustainable public food procurement matters
Bringing together policy perspectives and on-the-ground experience, the webinar aimed to strengthen understanding of EU initiatives in this field, showcase inspiring good practices, and explore how health, sustainability, and fairness can be effectively integrated into public food procurement through concrete examples.
The programme was structured around three key themes: Public food procurement in the EU policy landscape, Changing public food procurement from below, and Sustainable public food procurement in practice. Together, these sessions offered a comprehensive overview of both the strategic framework and practical pathways for advancing more sustainable procurement systems across Europe.
Rethinking sustainable food and public procurement in the EU
Sustainable food systems are about more than what ends up on our plates. At their core, they are about ensuring that everyone has access to safe, nutritious food, today and in the future, without compromising the environmental, social, and economic foundations that make food production possible in the long term.
Sustainable food brings together several dimensions. It is about protecting the environment by reducing pressure on natural resources and ecosystems. It is about health, by enabling diets that support wellbeing. It is also about economic vitality, by sustaining jobs and strengthening local economies. At the same time, it addresses pressing social challenges such as food poverty and unequal access to nutritious food. Ethical considerations, including animal welfare and responsible production practices, also play an important role. Finally, it encompasses food quality and system resilience, ensuring that food remains fresh, safe, and reliable even in the face of shocks and crises.
Within this broader picture, food procurement is often underestimated. It is frequently seen simply as the administrative act of purchasing food for public institutions. In reality, it is a powerful strategic tool. Through procurement decisions, public authorities can actively influence how food is produced, supplied, and consumed, making it a key lever for driving more sustainable food systems.
Watch the webinar recording.
A shifting EU policy landscape
In recent years, EU food procurement policy has been moving within a dynamic and sometimes fragmented landscape. Under the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy, procurement was positioned as part of a wider transformation towards sustainable food systems, linking environmental protection, public health, and social wellbeing. This ambition even led to proposals such as a Sustainable Food Systems Law aimed at embedding sustainability into food procurement across Member States, although this initiative has since been withdrawn.
More recently, the policy emphasis has shifted. The Competitiveness Compass and the Vision for Agriculture and Food place stronger focus on productivity, competitiveness, and food security. While this represents a narrower framing than earlier strategies, public procurement is still recognised as an important instrument, particularly for supporting SMEs, encouraging local sourcing, and strengthening short supply chains through “best value” approaches rather than price alone.
At the same time, ongoing revisions of the EU Public Procurement Directive keep the topic firmly on the agenda. European Parliament resolution of 9 September 2025 on public procurement highlights procurement as a driver of stronger regional economies and a tool to advance sustainability goals, including healthier diets and climate resilience.
Adding further momentum, the Joint Research Centre (JRC) has developed voluntary criteria for sustainable food procurement. These broaden the perspective beyond environmental considerations alone, integrating health, social, and ethical dimensions, while also encouraging more strategic and market-aware tendering practices.
Yet challenges persist. One of the most common barriers is confusion between procurement objectives and procurement rules: while the rules govern how public spending is carried out, they do not dictate what should be purchased. In addition, calls for “simplification” are interpreted in different ways, often as a need for clearer guidance rather than fewer regulations, since legal uncertainty can push buyers towards the lowest-price option.
As the revision of the directive approaches, it is likely that food procurement will remain part of a broader policy discussion, but not necessarily a standalone priority, overshadowed by wider efforts to simplify and streamline EU rules.
Changing public food procurement from below
Across Europe, a growing ecosystem of initiatives is reshaping how public money is used to buy food, from schools to hospitals and city canteens. Despite different entry points, they share a common goal: making public procurement a lever for healthier, fairer, and more sustainable food systems.
The webinar showcased several key examples of these initiatives, including:
- The Buy Better Food campaign, coordinated by ICLEI Europe, drives awareness and political momentum to place sustainable procurement at the heart of food system transformation.
- The Food Policy Coalition has developed a detailed, operational manifesto anticipating EU procurement reform. It combines governance principles with practical criteria, from healthy diets and climate action to fair trade, animal welfare, and support for small-scale farmers, translated into tools that public authorities can directly use in tenders.
- The Freeing Public Procurement campaign led by France Urbaine and other French/Belgian organisations argues for simpler procurement rules and greater flexibility for municipalities, allowing them to directly shape a share of food purchasing while still pursuing sustainability goals.
Sustainable procurement as a systems lever: practical examples
A key focus of the webinar was to illustrate how health, sustainability, and fairness can be effectively embedded into public food procurement through concrete, real-world examples. One of the central case studies presented was the School Food for Change experience.
The School Food for Change project aimed to strengthen the capacity of municipalities and school authorities to use procurement as a strategic lever for transforming school food systems. This meant moving beyond purely price-driven purchasing decisions towards tenders that also integrate health, environmental sustainability, food diversity, taste, and social value.
To support this transition, the project co-developed legally compliant procurement criteria in collaboration with 18 cities. These criteria have since informed more than 30 tenders across Europe. In practice, they translate policy ambitions into operational tools, embedded directly in technical specifications and award criteria, ensuring that sustainability objectives can be applied consistently across different local contexts and procurement models.
The School Food for Change project operated across cities with highly diverse procurement systems, which made it possible to test and adapt solutions to different local contexts.
Three main procurement models emerged:
- direct municipal purchasing of food
- outsourcing to catering companies (the most common model)
- school-led procurement where individual schools manage their own food purchasing
A key output of the project was the development of a common procurement framework and practical guidance handbook. This included legally screened criteria and contract performance clauses designed to ensure that sustainability commitments made in tenders are effectively delivered throughout contract implementation.
A central feature of the approach was the use of market dialogues, understood as structured exchanges between contracting authorities and suppliers before, during, and after procurement processes. These dialogues were essential to address structural barriers in public food procurement systems, which often favour large suppliers and make it difficult for small farmers, cooperatives, and SMEs to participate. In practice, they enabled municipalities to test feasibility, co-design requirements, and improve implementation.
A key example comes from Umeå, Sweden, where market dialogue supported the inclusion of social employment clauses in a food contract and continued throughout implementation to ensure delivery.
The project’s procurement work also translated into a set of operational targets and criteria across several domains. For organic food, cities were encouraged to reach at least 40% organic sourcing, including transitional farms. Cities such as Vienna demonstrated how sustained market engagement can deliver high organic shares while scaling up school meal provision. Nuoro (Italy), demonstrated how a structured pre-tender consultation process can drive significant improvements, helping increase organic sourcing from 13% to 75% within just a few years.
Beyond sourcing standards, the project emphasised nutrition, taste, and seasonality, ensuring that sustainability objectives were matched with meal quality and acceptability for children. Regions such as Dordogne (France) illustrated this through decentralised, scratch-cooking systems based on fresh, seasonal ingredients and strong links with local suppliers.
Climate impact was addressed through greenhouse gas reduction strategies embedded in procurement criteria, particularly by shifting towards more plant-based menus and reducing reliance on carbon-intensive animal products, alongside stronger food waste prevention measures.
Overall, the project demonstrates how procurement, when combined with structured market engagement and clear sustainability targets, can drive systemic improvements in school food systems across Europe.
Stay informed and follow our progress
The Food Partnership will continue to deliver key outputs in the coming months. Visit the Food Partnership webpage regularly to stay informed about the latest developments, upcoming activities, and opportunities to engage.