FOOD WASTE IN EU COUNTRIES Viktória Vida – Tünde Zita Kovács – Adrián Szilárd Nagy – Hajnalka Madai - Beáta Bittner University of Debrecen 4032 Debrecen, Böszörményi str. 138, Hungary vida.viktoria@econ.unideb.hu kovacs.tunde.zita@econ.unideb.hu nagy.adrian@econ.unideb.hu madai.hajnalka@econ.unideb.hu bittner.beata@econ.unideb.hu ABSTRACT The biggest challenges of our time include meeting the demand growth resulting from the explosion in population growth and achieving sustainable management. In terms of food, the most significant problem is, on the one hand, that a large part of the population is hungry and, on the other hand, excessive food waste, which results not only in wasted food but also in wasted resources used for its production, transport, packaging and storage. Do to this the unconsumed food has a profoundly negative impact on the environment and the economy. There is a pressing need to prevent and reduce food waste to transition to a resource-efficient Europe. In this study, we would like to show how food waste changes in different countries, focusing on Europe. Our results show a significant discrepancy between Member States' data and where waste is generated. We find no significant correlation between GDP per capita and total food waste, but we find a moderately strong correlation between GDP per capita and restaurant waste at the point of generation. Keywords: food loss, food waste EU-27 JEL code: M21 INTRODUCTION Food wastage is essential to global food security and good environmental governance, which are closely related to environmental (e.g. energy, climate change, water, availability of resources), economic (e.g. resource efficiency, price volatility, increasing costs, consumption, waste management, commodity markets) and social (e.g. health, equality) impacts (Stenmarck et al., 2016). Of these factors, the efficiency of economic factors is perhaps the easiest to measure, as there are different levels of indicators available (Nábrádi et al., 2008, Kovács-Szűcs 2020). Efficiency measurement has been used in many sectors to assess performance and the impact of government decisions (Kovács, 2014). Different studies show that between 1/3 and 1/2 of the world's food production is not consumed (Gustavsson et al., 2011; Bio Intelligence study, 2010), leading to negative impacts throughout the food supply chain, including households. Consumer awareness is also a significant factor in relation to food waste, Bauerné et al. showed in their study that conscious food consumer behavior is present to varying degrees among young people and environmental awareness comes to the fore among conscious food consumers, and in many cases they avoid food waste, as compared to those who do not consider themselves to be health- and environment-conscious (Bauerné Gáthy et al., 2022). There are several definitions of food waste. The definition of FUSIONS is in line with the official definition adopted by the European Commission (EU, 2018), except that the latter does not include crops ploughed back into the soil or not harvested. Food loss is the decrease in the quantity or quality of food resulting from decisions and actions by food suppliers in the chain, excluding retailers, food service providers and consumers (FAO, 2021). Food waste refers to all discarded, burned or otherwise disposed of along the food supply chain from