2024-02-21 13:46:00
Usually already tense, the commercial negotiations concluded at the start of 2024 would have been even more tense this year. In any case, this is what the CEO of the Consumer Business Liaison Institute (Ilec), which represents the voice of very large manufacturers, says.
The reason is twofold in his eyes. Firstly : “Instead of having three months of negotiations, we only had six weeks or eight weeks”, lamented Richard Panquiault on BFM Business this Wednesday. It is true that the negotiations usually end on March 1, but they were brought forward this year by the government which hoped that the reductions in wholesale prices of certain foods would be reflected more quickly on the shelves, after two years of very strong price reductions. food inflation at more than 20% on average. They ended on January 31.
On the other hand, “we did not change the calendar of negotiations upstream in the same way”, added Richard Panquiault. And to explain: “Which means that effectively, when manufacturers sent their prices to negotiate with distributors, most of the time they had not finalized the contracts upstream with the farmers. And it is this gap this year which creates particular tensions”, he said.
There is ” Of course “ regularly « tensions » during commercial negotiations, conceded the boss of Ilec, but “we were not helped by the legislative plan and by anticipation” of the calendar, he said. “And we were also not helped by the fact that a certain number of distributors decided that we were no longer trading in France but in Spain and the Netherlands,” he tackled, without mentioning any names.
A new bill by this summer
These comments from the CEO of the lobby of large industrialists come in a context of agricultural crisis in France. The mobilization of farmers in recent weeks has shed light on the Egalim laws, supposed to guarantee them decent remuneration by preventing them from selling at prices lower than their production costs. Four versions have followed one another since the first, promulgated in November 2018 during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term. For a result that does not satisfy everyone.
So much so that the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, promised during his press conference this Wednesday morning, “a new bill to strengthen the Egalim system which will be presented by the summer”. With this in mind, a parliamentary mission was entrusted to deputies Alexis Izard (Renaissance) and Anne-Laure Babault (MoDem).
Richard Panquiault spoke about this desire of the government. For him, the income of farmers “is treated by Egalim 2, which is two years old. We are only in our third round of negotiations on the basis of this text,” he recalled. “We must first analyze it, take stock,” he believes.
The crucial issue of controls
The question through this new text will however be to know the extent of the controls and the capacity of the State to sanction. The government has insisted in recent weeks that it would strengthen control of contracts signed as part of the negotiations, as well as sanctions for manufacturers and distributors who do not respect the law. And got down to it: at the end of this year’s negotiations, 1,400 checks were carried out on the 200 largest manufacturers and the 5 major distributors, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, indicated this Wednesday. It shows “150 cases of non-compliance, in particular for delays in signing contracts”. Pre-sanctions have been notified.
Bruno Le Maire announced that 150 agents from the Fraud Repression (DGCCRF), Bercy department, were mobilized to control large manufacturers and supermarkets. A figure to compare with the plurality of stakeholders concerned. Solidaires CCRF & SCL, the first fraud repression union, recalls that the workforce of this administration has fallen by almost 30% since 2007, while there are “several tens of thousands of operators”, including more than 17,000 agro-industrialists.
As part of this strengthening of controls, it also appears that two European mass distribution purchasing centers “did not respect French law”. They are therefore targeted by “pre-fines” amounting to several “tens of millions of euros”. They have two months to put forward their contradictory arguments, at the end of which the sanctions will be “definitive”.
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