Registered as part of the European Days of Action 2025
Date: Thursday, 16 October 17:00 to 18:30 hours
Venue: Brussels School of Governance (Vrije Universiteit Brussel), Pleinlaan 5, Brussels (hybrid format)
RSVP: Please find the event registration link and related details below.
Contemporary food systems in the European Union (EU) face interconnected ecological, social, health, and democratic crises. Environmental degradation, poor diets, opaque supply chains, and unequal access to nutritious food create an urgent need for systemic reform and greater food justice. At the same time, citizens are increasingly recognised as essential actors – not merely as consumers, but as co-creators of sustainable food systems and the policies that shape them.
This seminar will present food citizenship (FC) as a forward-looking response. While discussed in academia and advocacy, FC remains fragmented and less developed than frameworks such as digital or energy citizenship, limiting its recognition in EU policymaking. Yet amid ongoing transitions in EU food policy and wider debates on democratic renewal, there is a window of opportunity to place food citizenship on the policy agenda as a pathway toward transformative change in how the EU governs food systems.
The presentation will outline how FC has been conceptualised in academic and grey literature, what is missing when contrasted with the rich empirical landscape of FC initiatives across the EU, and how existing EU policies already – implicitly but incomprehensively – foster elements of food citizenship. Building on this, the speaker will argue that once consolidated into a framework, food citizenship could guide a new paradigm for democratic and sustainable food systems. A draft framework of principles for EU food citizenship will be presented, intended to inform further research, institutional experimentation, and eventual policy adoption.
The aim of the seminar is to share knowledge and foster an open exchange of ideas on the subject.
Target audience
Stakeholders in EU food policy, engaged citizens in Brussels, and students from higher education institutions in Brussels and beyond.
Programme
The seminar will start with a 40-minute presentation by the speaker followed by comments from discussant(s). Open discussion with the audience will follow. The event will conclude with an Informal networking with refreshments.
Speaker
József Slezák – PhD Candidate at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy, Central European University (CEU), Associated Researcher with the Environment and Democracy Working Group of CEU’s Democracy Institute, and Fellow of the Sustainable Europe Research Institute SERI Germany
Discussants
Leida Rijnhout – Director of the European Network for Community-Led Initiatives on Climate Change and Sustainability (ECOLISE).
Dr. Stefan Wahlen – Professor of Food Sociology at Justus Liebig University Giessen. (online).
Registration
Secure your spot by completing the registration form no later than 10 October 2025.