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Their aims and functions vary, depending on the specific national and regional policy frameworks in which they are embedded or not, and include different aspects and competencies including planning/food strategy, coordination, lobbying, and technical expertise. There is potential in many of these structures to play a key role towards operationalising food justice, food democracy, agroecology and right to food issues, and they appear as promising multi-actor networks for agroecological transitions at the scale of city and regional food systems.

Introduction
The increasing institutionalisation of food systems issues and policies raises the question of how they are made collective and debated in democratic ways and beyond “closed” networks, as well as the link between such debates and the final decision-making processes. Across the world, diverse ways and types of arenas of debate are indeed emerging, under the forms of commissions, working groups or other multi-actor networks. Among these, food councils, although diverse, can be characterized by the fact that they include a diversity of actors from diverse backgrounds (institutions, civil society, economic actors) and are linked to policy making and policy implementation, although this link varies.