Polycrisis and EU Food Security Governance: Between Resilience and Dependency

In recent years, the European Union has faced a growing number of overlapping crises that together form a polycrisis affecting its food system. Climate shocks, the COVID-19 pandemic, rising energy prices, disruptions of global supply chains, and the war in Ukraine have turned food security into a strategic issue that goes far beyond agriculture. Food has become an area where environmental, economic, geopolitical, and security pressures come together.This paper discusses how the polycrisis has reshaped EU food security governance, focusing on the growing gap between resilience-oriented narratives and the reality of structural dependency. While EU strategic documents increasingly emphasise resilience, strategic autonomy, and crisis preparedness, the food system remains deeply dependent on external supplies, global trade, and vulnerable transport corridors.The paper follows key dimensions highlighted in recent EU debates: the shift from post-war self-sufficiency to trade-based food security, the tensions surrounding the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork strategy, the impact of the war in Ukraine on food transport and internal market stability, and the limits of EU institutional responses after 2022. Particular attention is given to external trade relations, including the EU–Mercosur agreement, as an example of how dependency has become embedded in EU food security governance despite resilience-oriented ambitions. The paper argues that the polycrisis has exposed the limits of the existing governance framework rather than fundamentally transforming it. EU food security governance remains largely reactive, marked by short-term crisis management and unresolved tensions between sustainability goals, social stability, and strategic dependency.