The role of the EU in transnational regulation of food safety: extending experimentalist governance?

This chapter assesses whether and how far the EU adopts an experimentalist approach in transnational regulation of food safety. Both the EU system of import safety, including regulatory cooperation with third countries, and the EU’s embeddedness within global governance institutions, such as the WTO and the Codex Alimentarius, are analysed. The findings indicate that the increasing use of international standards as the basis for EU food safety regulation is able to transform the nature of the EU as a unilateral standard-setter. Moreover, the EU Food and Veterinary Office and the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed offer important opportunities for third countries to communicate their needs back into the Union’s regulatory process. However, there are also challenges to fully realizing the EU’s experimentalist potential in transnational food safety regulation. The chapter identifies some experimentalist solutions that failed to unfold in practice, and suggests how to address this in the future.