The recent convergence of climate shocks, geopolitical conflict, supply chain disruptions, financial instability, and democratic fragility has revealed that food security in Europe is inseparable from broader questions of national and regional security.
Recent crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the Russia- Ukraine war, and disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz, demonstrate that even relatively wealthy regions remain vulnerable to cascading supply shocks affecting their food systems and food security.
Europe has so far weathered such disruptions better than many regions of the world because of its fiscal capacity, institutional strengths, and well-funded social protection systems. Resilience, however, should not be mistaken for immunity. European food systems depend heavily on global flows of fertilizers, natural gas, animal feeds, vitamins, minerals, and other strategic inputs (European Commission 2022). Disruptions to any of these key supply chains can rapidly affect food availability, access, affordability, consumer agency, and/or nutritional quality (European Commission 2025). These vulnerabilities have implications beyond food security, including for public health, economic performance, and wider social cohesion and resilience.
Unlike some other regions of the world, Europe is unlikely to face widespread food shortages given its high level of self-sufficiency in key agricultural products and stable food supply (European Commission 2023a). Its challenge is different: maintaining the continuity of complex food and nutrition systems during prolonged crises while ensuring that economically vulnerable households can continue to access adequate and nutritious food. In 2025, 92.7 million people—20.9 percent of the EU population—were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, underscoring that food insecurity in Europe is often a question of affordability and unequal access rather than overall availability (Eurostat 2026).
Europe depends on global supply chains for agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and protein feeds, but also for vitamins, medical nutrition products, infant formula, and other specialized foods required by vulnerable populations. Disruptions to supply chains can create risks for food production and access to nutritionally important products, with potential implications for nutrition and public health (European Commission 2025). In such circumstances, the issue is no longer simply whether enough food exists, but whether populations can maintain adequate nutrition over time. In an era of recurring and interconnected crises, Europe must therefore focus on nutrition continuity—the ability of societies to sustain nutritional adequacy throughout future food crises.
Here, nutrition continuity refers to continued access to calories, proteins, essential fats, vitamins, and minerals, as well as the maintenance of public nutrition services such as school meals, maternal nutrition programs, and clinical nutrition support. Importantly, it also recognizes that different population groups face different risks during crises and therefore, require different forms of protection.
Particular attention must be paid to vulnerable groups. Women, children, older adults, people with chronic illnesses, migrants, refugees, and low-income households can face heightened risks if food systems are disturbed (WHO 2020; WHO 2022). Disruptions in access to nutritious foods and specialized nutrition products can have serious consequences, particularly for people with specific nutritional and medical needs, even when overall food supplies remain adequate. School meal programs and food assistance systems can become particularly important safety nets during periods of crisis, such as during the COVID-19 crisis (Rossi 2020).
Nutrition Continuity is a Security Issue
When nutrition falters, the security implications are significant. Food insecurity and nutritional decline can erode trust in institutions, drive social tensions, undermine health outcomes, and amplify existing inequalities. From one side of Europe to the other, food and nutrition stress has fed political instability, migration pressures, and humanitarian emergencies. Siege-induced hunger in Bosnia contributed to the largest displacement in Europe since 1945 (UNHCR 2012). The 2022 price shock following Russia’s attack on Ukraine triggered export and import restrictions by several EU member states, briefly fracturing the single market in grain (European Commission 2023b). In the UK in 2023/24, record food bank demand has become a recurring feature of political debate over whether the social security system provides enough for people to afford essential goods (Trussell Trust 2024; UK Parliament 2024). Farmer protests across France, Germany, Poland, Belgium, and the Netherlands in 2024 blocked roads, border crossings, and access to major cities, increasing pressure on the EU to weaken or delay several agricultural and environmental policies (Abnett 2024).
‟Resilience, however, should not be mistaken for immunity.”
Food systems should therefore be viewed not merely as structures requiring protection, but as strategic assets whose resilience directly affects local, national, and regional security by safeguarding nutrition. Maintaining adequate nutrition throughout a crisis underpins public health, social cohesion, and societal resilience.
Building a European Nutrition Security Strategy
Preparing for future crises requires moving beyond traditional food security planning to engage central banks and other financial actors from whom we can learn useful lessons.
Following the 2007–2008 global financial crisis, stress testing became a standard tool for identifying vulnerabilities and assessing the banking sector’s resilience to severe systemic shocks. Yet, no comparable process has yet been applied systematically to food systems.
European institutions and member states should establish regular food system stress tests that model complex, multi-hazard scenarios involving climate impacts, conflict, energy disruptions, supply chain failures, and financial shocks. These exercises should assess not only food availability and access but also nutrition continuity, with explicit attention to women, children, older adults, migrants, and other vulnerable populations. Results should inform contingency planning, strategic reserves, and emergency response mechanisms.
The recent Food Alert workshops organized in 2024 by partners including Sciences Po, Chatham House, and the European Policy Centre, involved European institutions and regional stakeholders and began exploring how food system stress testing can help policymakers anticipate and prepare for cascading disruptions. Such exercises offer a practical mechanism for identifying hidden dependencies, testing response capacities, and strengthening coordination among key sectors and governance institutions before a crisis occurs.
A European Nutrition Security Strategy should therefore place nutritional continuity at the center of resilience planning. It should ensure that food systems are prepared to supply sufficient quantities of food and safeguard adequate nutrition for all populations throughout future food crises. This may require some degree of stockpiling, logistical preparation, adjustments to procurement regulations, policy planning, and training at different levels of public administration—from Brussels down to local communities (schools, hospitals, nursing homes, etc.).
Achieving SDG 2 (Zero Hunger) now requires a more holistic understanding of “security”. The challenge is no longer simply preventing hunger or starvation; it is ensuring that societies can maintain equitable access to adequate nutrition during periods of prolonged disruption. By treating food and nutrition systems as strategic security assets, Europe can strengthen resilience at home while supporting global efforts to realize the right to adequate food for all in the most vulnerable and crisis-affected regions.