Nicole Gollnick, PhD,
Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Berlin, Germany

Capacity building has become an important field of activity for the food safety institutions in Europe. Developing a joint European capacity building approach is an important chance to meet the different demands of stakeholders within and outside the EU. It also provides an opportunity towards greater international harmonisation of food and feed safety risk assessment, risk management and risk communication. Currently, member states usually engage in capacity building activities based on individual, often bilateral, collaboration actions and initiatives which may or may not be formalised by signed protocols. However, many of the capacity building activities are based on similar requests from food safety organisations in countries inside the EU (including new EU member states) or outside the EU.

In September 2016, the EFSA Advisory Forum called for an Advisory Forum Discussion Group (AF DG) lead by Germany to

• support the Advisory Forum in developing a common European strategy for capacity building
• take into consideration capacity building activities by other international risk assessment organisations within and outside the EFSA network
• develop realistic ideas about how to join forces and achieve synergy in the area of capacity building.

This presentation highlights the current state of discussion of the AF DG on Capacity Building.