Small-scale food producers need the backing of the EU to ensure that sales contracts were honoured, argued the EU Thursday as it proposed policies to stamp out unfair practices in wholesale food markets.
In its first proposal on regulating unfair practices in food trade, the European Commission said the new rules would give leverage to small and medium-size suppliers and companies, which often have no bargaining power against big retailers and food processors.
The commission said it wanted to ban last-minute cancellations, late payments on perishable products, unilateral changes to contracts and making producers take back unsold products.
“Today’s proposal is fundamentally about fairness – about giving voice to the voiceless – for those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves the victims of a weak bargaining position. “Any chain is only as strong as its weakest link,’’ said Agriculture Commissioner, Phil Hogan.
The commission called each EU country to designate a public authority to enforce the proposed new rules if such a body did not already exist.
The proposal, which still needs to be approved by the European Parliament and EU countries, already, received some industry pushback.
The German trade association HDE called the measures “superfluous and harmful’’ that could lead to an increase in food retail prices.
Meanwhile, rights organisations welcomed the proposal. “Nobody should suffer to stock our supermarket shelves, yet too many small farmers in poor countries producing food for European supermarkets are struggling to make ends meet.
“This proposal could help them get a fairer deal for their produce,” ’’ said Marc-Olivier Herman of Oxfam EU.
