EU Overview
Explore key indicators and trends across the European Union.
Explore the indicatorsEU Food System Monitoring Dashboard
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Country Profile
Explore indicators from a country perspective.
Select a countryMethodology
Find out how the indicators were selected and developed.
Learn moreAbout the dashboard
Indicators from official public data sources and peer-reviewed research are brought together, covering the food supply chain from primary production to consumption and key aspects such as climate, pollution, biodiversity, economic viability and the food environment.
Indicators were selected through a review of scientific evidence and existing frameworks, complemented by consultations with European Commission departments, stakeholders and Member States.
The dashboard will evolve over time, in line with scientific, technical and policy developments. The process has also highlighted important data gaps and areas for further work.
EU Overview
Visualise data for one indicator across all EU countries.
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Country Profile
Methodology
The development of a framework to monitor the sustainability of the EU food system required a systematic approach that involved creating a robust methodology, as described below.
Review of scientific literature and existing monitoring systems
To understand the sustainability of the EU food system, the JRC thoroughly reviewed the scientific literature and the related European acts, particularly the European Green Deal and the farm to fork strategy. We also examined other existing monitoring systems and adopted suitable concepts and components to strengthen semantic and technical interoperability.
Developing the conceptual model
Inspired by the ‘reuse of existing’ principle, the JRC collated information on food system sustainability from many different sources while ensuring consistency with the original datasets.
The conceptual model, on one hand, contains primary food production, food processing, distribution and consumption as components of the food supply chain. On the other, sustainability aspects are captured in a hierarchical manner through:
3 dimensions (environmental, economic and social, with the latter including health aspects of diets)
12 thematic areas
38 domains.
This structure allows indicators to be anchored to the elements of the model and identify knowledge gaps.
Harmonising metadata and quality assessment of indicators
To improve comparability of the harvested indicators, we needed to harmonise their metadata. The metadata schema applied in the monitoring framework includes the:
name
definition
description
the related supply chain components and sustainability domains
unit of measurement
description of methodology
geographic and temporal coverage.
To evaluate the fitness of indicators, a rigorous quality assessment framework was established with specific criteria and scoring rules.
Selecting the indicators
More than 300 indicators that monitor existing policies were screened and assessed to reflect their relevance and continuity of data supply. Indicators that were irrelevant to EU food system sustainability, as well as duplicates (indicators with different names but same data content) were removed from the database. The remaining pool of indicators was subjected to the selection process, based on:
the quality scores assigned during the quality assessment
the analysis and comparison of indicators within a specific domain
a cross-check of the domains to define the final designation and the role of the indicators in the dashboard.
This process resulted in the following categories of indicators.
Headline indicators, which respond to the most prominent policy targets and objectives. These indicators are currently the only ones reflected in the dashboard.
Secondary indicators, which further detail a headline indicator or provide information on other, less prominent aspects of sustainability.
Placeholders for potential indicators that would address the identified knowledge gaps (i.e. domains and/or supply chain components not covered by suitable data).
Denomination
The dashboard includes two types of indicators.
Extensive: the indicator is expressed in natural measurement units (kilograms, euros, etc.). These values often depend on other variables, such as a country’s area, population, or economy size. Extensive indicators do not account for performance or efficiency (i.e. measuring outputs relative to inputs).
Intensive: intensive indicators are expressed as a unit of natural measurement in relation to another internal property (e.g. GDP (euros), population). Intensive indicators are useful to compare the performance of countries.
Extensive indicators can be transformed into intensive indicators by dividing them with suitable denominators (for example, a country’s food waste in tonnes divided by its population = food waste per capita).
Defining direction
The values of indicators have a desired trend of changes. A positive direction means that the growth of the indicator value reflects the improvement in food system sustainability (for example, in self-sufficiency rates, indices of biodiversity). A negative direction means that a decreasing value of the indicator is beneficial for sustainability (for example: accidents at work, food waste, emissions).
Food-System Model
You can navigate the Food System Model hierarchy in the below interactive sunburst diagram.
Resilience methodology
The resilience of the EU food system is evaluated through three core properties that capture how systems respond to disturbances of increasing intensity and duration:
Stability: The ability of the food system to keep core functions (production, distribution, access) operating during brief, low intensity shocks, using only minor, short term adjustments without altering its basic structure.
Adaptability: The capacity to modify practices, reallocate resources or reconfigure system components when moderate, recurring disturbances arise, through incremental changes that preserve the overall system set up.
Transformability: The capability to fundamentally redesign key aspects of the food system (production models, land use regimes, market or governance arrangements) when deep, persistent pressures render the existing configuration unsustainable, creating new long term pathways.
To operationalise these concepts, the following steps are undertaken:
Retrieve indicators from the EU Food System Monitoring dashboard.
Assess the conceptual relevance of the indicator in terms of the three resilience properties (Stability, Adaptability, Transformability).
Apply statistical processing (winsorisation) to reduce outliers and skewness.
Establish a resilience score for each indicator by benchmarking the annual value for a MS against the EU 27 historical distribution (using deciles). Annual values are converted to a 0–1 score and direction-aligned.
Weight indicators by the number of resilience properties they cover (0 to 3).
Aggregate weighted scores through the FSMF hierarchy, preserving the 0–1 scale, from domain → thematic area → dimension → overall, preserving.
Summarise the annual composite scores using three time series metrics –Level (average performance), Trend (direction of change) and Variability (stability of the trajectory) – to describe the system’s preparedness, evolution and volatility over the assessment period.
Because aggregation requires multiple indicators, composite scores are currently provided at the dimension level (environmental, economic, social and food system resilience) and, where data permit, at the associated thematic area level. An overall food system resilience index is also produced to summarise the system’s general preparedness.
At present, resilience is expressed through separate scores for environmental, economic and social dimensions for each Member State and for the EU as a whole. For the EU values the median of the individual Member State scores is calculated for each year. This approach ensures a consistent, comparable picture of resilience across the Union while highlighting both national results and EU level trends.
For more details, please read the technical report.
Publications
EU food system monitoring framework. Extending the framework towards governance and resilience.
Report on the second update of the EU food system monitoring framework, expanding the dashboard with 35 new indicators and strengthening the representation of governance and resilience alongside the environmental, economic and social dimensions.
English
EU Food System Monitoring Dashboard
This factsheet demonstrates the potential of the dashboard through 12 selected indicators giving a flash analysis of the underlaying data.
English
EU food system monitoring framework. Fifteen new indicators to achieve a more balanced indicator coverage.
Report on the first update of the EU food system monitoring framework, expanding the dashboard with fifteen new indicators to provide more balanced and comprehensive coverage of environmental, economic, and social dimensions across the food system.
English
Towards sustainable food systems: developing a monitoring framework for the EU
This article explores the development of a comprehensive framework for monitoring the sustainability of food systems within the European Union. By integrating environmental, economic and social dimensions, the framework aims to provide a structured approach to assessing progress towards more sustainable food systems. The authors identify key thematic areas and indicators to support evidence-based policymaking, improve policy coherence and highlight areas requiring further action.
English
EU food system monitoring framework. From concepts to indicators.
The accompanying technical report provides a detailed description of the process and methodology used to develop the dashboard.
English
User guide
The EU food system monitoring dashboard consists of 5 tabs: 3 descriptive and 2 data tabs.
The descriptive tabs include the Home, Methodology and Help sections. The Home and Methodology tabs explain the idea and the approach behind the monitoring framework. The Help tab aims to help people navigate through the dashboard.
The 2 data tabs are the EU overview and the Country profile. The EU overview allows for one indicator at a time to be viewed for the whole EU. The Country profile depicts a domain, a thematic area or an entire dimension and displays time series of indicators related to one or two countries at the same time.
Navigating the Food System Model
The dashboard is based on the EU Food System model that is organised in a hierarchical multilevel structure:
the first level is related to the dimension: Environmental , Economic, Social and Horizontal
in the second level, each dimension encompasses thematic areas;
in the third level, each thematic area encompasses domains;
in the fourth level, each domain encompasses indicators.
The vertical drill down menu of the 2 data tabs allows users to progressively expand and collapse the submenus. At first it presents the 4 dimensions of the food system model (in different colours): Environmental (green), Economic (blue), Social (yellow) and Horizontal (grey).
Each bar can be expanded by clicking anywhere on it. Select a dimension to display its thematic areas, then select a thematic area to reveal its domains. Domains can be expanded to display the corresponding indicators.
Full screen dashboard
You can view both the EU overview and the Country profile in full screen by clicking the button at the top right of the page. Click it again to return to the compact view.
Saving the data
You can export the chart as an image or download the underlying data by hovering over the chart to display the available options in the upper-right corner.
EU overview
Use this tab to view the selected indicator for all EU countries.
Select an indicator (fourth level) to view its data as a map, bar chart, timeline, or table by selecting the corresponding view.
The map and bar chart show the indicator data for the selected year.
The timeline allows you to see all the available years at a glance for one or more countries.
When an indicator comprises sub-indicators, you can select them from a drop-down list.
Some of the indicators can be displayed based on both extensive (default) and intensive values. To obtain the intensive value, switch denomination on.
Time navigator allows you to select and navigate through the years. By default, the chart displays data for the latest year, but you can select any other year shown on the timeline. The ‘play’ button allows you to animate the timeline, automatically progressing from the oldest to the most recent year.
Next to the time navigator, when available, the EU value is shown, as originally indicated by the data provider.
In addition to the sustainability aspects, a second hierarchical navigation based on the ‘Supply chain component’ is available above the left-hand menu.
This second option groups the indicators according to supply chain components within each dimension:
primary food production
food processing
food distribution
food consumption.
Furthermore, you can search for an indicator by typing part of its name in the search box. The indicators’ metadata can be accessed by clicking on the info (i) icon on the right side of every indicator.
Country profile
The Country profile visualises all the indicators included in a dimension, a thematic area, or a domain. The idea is to depict the selected country’s profile, by showing a group of coherent indicators at the same time.
To start, select a country of interest and an item from the multilevel menu in the Food System Model, on the left side of the page.
Expand the menu to show the lower hierarchical levels, from dimensions to thematic areas to domains, as described in the navigation section. Click the arrow pointing to the right to show all indicators that belong to the selected level.
After choosing a country and an item, a flag-chart is displayed for all the indicators belonging to the selected level. It shows a blue bar for every indicator, with a circle flag of the selected country placed between the minimum and maximum values of all the EU countries.
If an indicator has a positive direction, the higher values are displayed in the right of the bar. However, when a negative direction is desired, the lower values are in the right. The indicators displayed in the country profile report data from the latest available year.
To compare EU countries, all extensive indicators have been denominated (see Methodology tab for more details). They show a * symbol.
In this tab, you can select a second country for comparison.
The flag of the better performing country is closer to the right end of the bar, regardless of the direction of the indicator.
On the right side of each flag-chart, the icons below are displayed. Click on them to view the timeline chart of the indicator and see the whole time series (i.e. data for all available years), or to access the indicator metadata. In addition, the magnifying lens icon appears to make a selection when an indicator consists of sub-indicators.
If you are comparing countries, the indicator values of the selected countries are displayed in blue and orange. The diagram also shows two yellow lines, which represent the minimum and maximum value in EU countries, and a yellow dashed line, representing the EU average.
