Salt Reduction Initiatives across Europe

Salt reduction initiatives are underway in all the EU member states under the EU framework, but public awareness raising and reformulation are patchy. The EU framework for national salt initiatives was adopted in 2008 by the High Level Group on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. Members were asked to complete a template sent out by the Commission afterwards, giving details of individual national salt initiatives.

Some countries, such as France, Ireland and the UK, started raising public awareness as early as 2004 (Ireland, Lithuania, UK) and 2005 (Belgium). But in Austria, Estonia, Spain, France, Latvia, Norway, and Switzerland, the campaigns only swung into action in 2009.

In the latest report on the framework, published last summer, Greece, Sweden and Slovakia are seen to have taken no action on awareness raising yet, but they do report progress in other areas like data collection and monitoring.

Germany, Greece and Malta stand out as the slowest member states in the process.