As underlined in the White Paper on Strategy for Europe on Nutrition, Overweight and Obesity related health issues, the Commission considers that the development of effective partnerships must be the cornerstone of Europe’s response to tackling nutrition, overweight and obesity and their related health problems.

The EU Platform for Action on Diet, Physical Activity and Health started in March 2005 with the purpose to create a forum for actors at European level who can commit their membership to engage in concrete actions designed to contain or reverse current trends (see Founding Platform statement for details).

Some exceptions to this, among the founding participants of the Platform, are for example the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) or the World Health Organisation (WHO). They are taking part as observers and their scientific contribution to the exercise is of added value. Beyond such institutional actors, the aim is not to gather all with an interest in diet, physical activity and health into the platform, but rather to gather all those who are capable of committing themselves to action on those issues.

To date the Platform involves 33 member EU organisations ranging from food industry to consumer protection NGOs (see Member organisations list for details).

The spirit of the Platform is to work under the leadership of the European Commission and to provide an example, which others will choose to follow across Europe, of coordinated but autonomous actions by different parts of society to deal with the many aspects of the problem. It is not designed to pre-empt, but rather to stimulate, other initiatives at national, regional or local level.

The Platform meets at regular intervals for plenary meetings so as to monitor overall progress and discuss issues.

Since the Platform came to life back in March 2005 its members have worked on more than 200 commitments covering a very wide range of activities, including actions in key fields such as consumer information, including labelling; education; physical activity promotion; Marketing, advertising targeting children, labelling and product reformulation – i.e. the process during which the recipe for a product high in unhealthy substances (e.g. sugar, salt) is altered in order to make the product healthier. All initiatives including monitoring information are presented in the Platform commitments database.

Platform members have agreed to monitor and evaluate the performance of commitments in a transparent, participative and accountable way (see "Platform Monitoring Framework" paper). The Platform has released its 2009 Annual report which presents the 2008 activities and achievements of the Platform, and also examines how successfully the Platform’s members are monitoring the Platform’s progress.

Organisations willing to join are invited to download the Platform new membership questionnaire file for details on cooptation procedure.


EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health founding statement


Membership
EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health member organisations updated 2 September 2009
National contact points directory - EU Platform on diet, Physical Activity and Health updated 11 November 2008
Platform new membership questionnaire

Plenary sessions
Summary reports of the plenary meetings of the platform

Commitments
EU Platform database
Synopsis Commitments 2007 - EU Platform on diet, Physical Activity and Health updated 13 March 2007
Commitments 2007 - EU Platform on diet, Physical Activity and Health updated 14 March 2007

Monitoring
EU Platform on diet, Physical Activity and Health Monitoring Framework
EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health First Monitoring Progress Report
EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health Second Monitoring Progress Report
EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health 2008 Annual Report
EU Platform on Diet, Physical Activity and Health 2009 Annual Report updated 13 May 2009


Platform news
Robert Madelin Interviews
Europe acts against obesity (streaming video .wmv - 18 Mb) - (streaming video .rm - 19 Mb)