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Austria

Coordination Center for Sustainable Food Systems

Institutional set-up and structure

The Coordination Center for Sustainable Food Systems was established in 2023, in response to the anticipated introduction of the EU's regional sustainable food systems framework — a framework that was ultimately never tabled. It sits within the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), deliberately positioned outside the ministries it serves in order to give it political independence — although in practice that independence was limited, as its funding came from those same ministries. It was founded to coordinate food system governance across three ministries: agriculture, health and environment. Following the 2025 merger of the environment portfolio into the agriculture ministry, it now works to two: the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management. A three-person core team (two officers and a manager) carries out the work, supported by a strategic steering committee of heads of units and a smaller operational committee drawn from ministry contact points. The Centre operates alongside pre-existing multisectoral bodies, including the National Nutrition Commission in the health ministry.

Mandate and decision-making power

The Centre's mandate is to provide technical and administrative support for sustainable food system transformation, to support coordination of system change, and to support policy development. It was also originally intended to have a compliance role in relation to the forthcoming EU framework; this did not eventuate. It advises only. It prepares recommendations for the responsible minister and works to an annual programme agreed with the two ministries. There is no mechanism obliging the ministries to act on its advice, and its agenda is set by the directors general of those ministries rather than by the Centre itself. The mandate was not attached to any national political goal or legal instrument, and its objectives were left broadly defined at establishment. Its current work focus has narrowed to labelling, reflecting the ministries' attention to the Green Claims Directive.

The Centre is tasked with the following roles (building blocks):

  • Agenda setting: advocacy and dialogue

  • Policy formulation and decision making: providing technical advice; coordinating policy development

Who is involved

  • Government: the Federal Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Regions and Water Management (and, until the 2025 ministerial merger, the Federal Ministry of Environment)

  • Host agency: the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety

  • Expert network: researchers and sectoral experts, convened through a standing food systems network of some 200–300 state and non-state stakeholders, built by the Centre

  • Wider commissions: the National Nutrition Commission, whose members include ministries, universities, chambers and non-governmental organisations

How it works in practice

  • The core team and the operational steering committee meet weekly with ministry contact points

  • The strategic steering committee meets quarterly

  • The team meets heads of division once or twice a year

  • An annual conference on healthy and sustainable nutrition is held in September, with network events twice a year

  • Work proceeds by consensus, with a vote taken where consensus cannot be reached

  • An annual work programme and an annual report are submitted to the two ministries for approval

Opportunities for improvement

  • Additional funding and staffing would extend what the Centre is able to take on

  • Agreeing clear goals, and how ministries will take up the Centre's outputs, would strengthen its footing

  • Publishing the work programme and outputs would make the Centre's contribution visible beyond its member

Evidence base: key informant interviews and policy documents, 2026. Last updated: September 2026.

Strengths

  • Brings the health, agriculture and sustainability sectors into regular contact, widening the perspective on food system questions

  • An annual work programme sets shared priorities across the participating sectors

  • Provides access to a wide pool of expertise through the national commissions and through the host agency

  • Synthesises evidence across fields that individual ministries lack the time to cover

  • Has built a community of non-state food system actors and increased information flow and trust among them

  • Its position outside the ministries allows it to broker across sectors

  • Connected ministries and non-state actors to the Austrian Promotional Bank's food systems funding programme