Copa and Cogeca demand EU legislation to stop unfair trading practices
Copa and Cogeca submitted the response to the impact assessment in Brussels, after it was released in July.
Copa and Cogeca Secretary-General Pekka Pesonen said “The huge imbalance of power in the food supply chain has left us with no choice but to opt for option 3 and call for legislation to be introduced to improve farmers’ positioning and to stop unfair trading practices. It is unacceptable that farmers get for example only 20% of the price of a piece of steak when they are the ones who do the majority of the work in producing it. The voluntary Supply Chain Initiative (SCI) which was developed by retailers and processors, to which Copa and Cogeca did not sign up to, clearly does not work”.
Market transparency also needs to be increased. Option 2 is the preferred option here as improved information will enable all operators in the food supply chain to more informed decisions. In addition, we need to have derogations from competition law to enable agricooperatives and other types of producer organisations to grow in size and scale.
Copa and Cogeca also welcome publication by the EU Commission of an EU-wide public consultation on how to make the EU food supply chain fairer and are preparing a contribution to it. “We expect this to feed into the Commission’s proposals which are due out in Spring 2018 so that farmers can receive a fair price for their work”, he concluded. For details of the impact assessment, see: https://ec.europa.eu/info/news/inception-impact-assessment-food-supplychain-published_en
For more information:
Copa Cogeca
www.copa-cogeca.eu