Lords EU Committee launches Green Card pilot to give more EU influence to National Parliaments

The Committee has today written to parliaments in other Member States, asking them to sign up to the inaugural Green Card initiative, which will call on the European Commission to draft a strategy to tackle food waste. It's estimated that 89 million tonnes of food are wasted each year across the EU.

The Green Card, proposed by the Committee in its 2014 report, would allow a group of national parliaments working together to suggest new EU laws, or changes to or repeal of existing legislation. This proactive approach would move beyond the current role of national parliaments, which is formally limited to raising objections to EU proposals through the Yellow Card system.

In this instance the Green Card will ask the Commission to develop an EU-wide food waste prevention strategy, covering areas such as redistribution of unsold food, complying with laws on labelling, and encouraging consumers and industry to prevent and reduce food waste.

Chair of the EU Select Committee Lord Boswell, said:

“Food waste is widely recognised to be not only significantly damaging to the EU economy but also immensely destructive to the wider environment.

We've identified that there is a gap where an EU strategy on food waste should be, and attempting to plug this gap presents us with an ideal opportunity to pilot our ideas for a Green Card.

The Green Card will enable national parliaments to join together in bringing forward new ideas. If national parliaments are to have a role in restoring trust in the EU, they need to do more than just say “no” to the things they don't like. The Green Card could be key to ensuring that they play a more engaged, constructive role in future.

So we're excited to be able to fire the starting gun on this idea, and to ask other national parliaments within the EU to come on board.”