EFSA sets out 2022-2027 strategy

The European Food Safety Authority’s Management Board has adopted its 2022-2027 Strategy, setting out the priorities for the organisation, the results it aims to achieve and the high-level actions that will help the Authority to meet its objectives.

The adoption follows two years of consultation with EFSA partners, stakeholders, Management Board and the wider public – identifying challenges and opportunities and what the EFSA can do to address them.

The world continues to change rapidly. An amendment to the General Food Law came into effect in 2021, increasing the EFSA’s responsibilities towards EU citizens; EU-wide policy developments, such as the Farm to Fork Strategy, will shape the focus of EFSA activities in the years ahead; and the Authority notes that the pandemic requires it to adapt to new ways of working.

What the EFSA will do to remain relevant in this changing context, it says, is delivering trustworthy assessment and communication of risks from farm to fork. This will remain the EFSA’s core business, as set out in Strategic Objective 1, in the years to come.

Strategic Objective 2 tackles how the Authority will ensure preparedness for future risk analysis needs. Finally, Strategic Objective 3 is about how EFSA will manage and enable its operations. EFSA says it will seek to empower staff and ensure organisational agility.

The Authority notes it won’t be able to do this alone. In the face of current and future challenges to the provision of safe, healthy and sustainable food, the EFSA will take cooperation to a new level by creating value through partnerships within an EU knowledge ecosystem. This ethos of collaboration – and EFSA’s more focused role as an enabler of collective action – is at the heart of its Strategy 2027, it says.

EFSA is ensuring all the building blocks are in place to enable implementation of the strategy in January 2022. This includes developing performance indicators that will allow it to monitor progress as well as organisational changes that it says will will turn EFSA ambitions into reality.

The EFSA Strategy 2027 is available here; a digital version will be available later this summer.

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