What Switzerland can learn from a coalition that's already moving EU policy
Lunch & Learn #3: Beyond the Food Fight
A neutral actor, by design
Europe's protein debate is often framed as a fight between camps: animal vs. plant, farmer vs. environmentalist, tradition vs. innovation. The result is predictable: polarisation, gridlock, and policy that satisfies no one.
One European initiative has been building a different approach.
From McKinsey to coalition building
Marin Vandamme co-founded The Protein Project in 2025 with a clear hypothesis: Europe's protein diversification space needs a neutral, coalition-building actor — not a lobby, not an advocacy group, but something structurally different that can hold the value chain together without being captured by any single interest. Based in Brussels, the organisation works across the EU institutions and convenes farmers, food producers, retailers, researchers, and civil society in a single space.
His path to this work is itself worth noting. A physicist by training, Marin spent five years at McKinsey leading national food and agriculture strategies in East Africa. He then became a fellow at the School for Moral Ambition, an initiative founded by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman to channel ambitious talent toward the world's most pressing problems. The Protein Project grew out of that fellowship.
From 90 interviews to CAP reform
The centrepiece of the session is a concrete case: the Legume Renaissance Roadmap, developed with 19 stakeholders from across the value chain and grounded in more than 90 expert interviews. Marin will walk through how the roadmap was built, how its recommendations were translated into policy asks, and where those asks have already landed in live debates, including in the ongoing reform of the Common Agricultural Policy.
For Switzerland, the questions this raises are timely ones: How do you bring actors with very different interests into a productive conversation? How do you move from a shared roadmap to policy that actually changes? And what kind of organisational form makes that possible?
Event Details
Date: Tuesday, 23. June 2026
Time: 12:15–13:15 CET Format: Online (link sent after registration)
Host: Protein Transition Switzerland
Learn with us
The format is designed for people from civil society, industry, policy, research, and agriculture who want to advance the protein transition together.
Dieser Beitrag ist auf Englisch verfasst, da die Veranstaltung vollständig auf Englisch durchgeführt wird.
