The senators on Wednesday approved in committee Frédéric Decrozaille’s measure, a reassessment of the power dynamics between industrialists and mass distribution. The requirement that distributors sell food products with a minimum margin of 10%, however, is suspended. Beginning on Wednesday, the text will be discussed in the hemicycle during first reading.
According to Anne-Catherine Loisier, a centrist rapporteur, “integrating” the consumer into the complicated equation involving relationships between suppliers and distributors is important since “the inflationary setting radically transforms the game.”
An “insult” to the FNSEA
The senators have brought up the subject of the threshold for selling at a loss specifically because of this. The clause requiring distributors to sell food goods with a minimum margin of 10% expires in April, but the National Assembly’s wording extends it until 2026. The senators want to put this law on hold for two years, until January 1, 2025, which could coincide with an inflationary time.
Since this endeavor “ran the risk of having severe implications for the entire sector” by reigniting “a price war” on food products, the FNSEA quickly cried out for “provocation.” The rapporteur responds that this device “has definitely not worked” and that it “takes roughly 600 million euros out of the purse of the consumer every year” without helping the farmers.
Toward a paradigm for hygiene product promotion
The senators also want to extend the regulation of food product advertisements to all consumer goods, particularly cleaning and hygiene products. The suspension of the SRP + 10 would result in “a minor inflationary effect, significantly lower,” according to the commission, than the purchasing power gains. For Anne-Catherine Loisier, the issue is one of safeguarding a French sector, the significance of which has been highlighted by the Covid problem.
The senators “framed” the device with regard to the centerpiece provision of the Decrozaille law, which involves experimenting altering the relationship between suppliers and industrialists in the food sector and mass distribution. They specifically said that the price applicable during the one-month notice of termination should take into account “the economic position of the market” if supplier and distributor had not already reached an arrangement by March 1. (inflation, average increases accepted by competitors).