At the end of the tense period of price negotiations between distribution groups and their suppliers, and a few days before the opening of the International Agricultural Show, which will take place from February 24 to March 3 in Paris, the government tried to give pledges of its firmness towards economic actors who do not respect the laws, and in particular the EGalim law, intended to protect agricultural income.
State services have “multiplied by two” controls over the last two weeks, indicated the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, during the press conference of the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, on the agricultural situation: 1,400 controls, carried out on the 200 largest industrialists and on the five major distributors, made it possible to detect “150 cases of non-compliance, in particular for delays in signing contracts and for non-compliance with deadlines set by the EGalim law”declared the minister, specifying that he had already “notified a certain number of presanctions”.
European purchasing centers (Belgium, Spain, etc.), from which distributors are suspected of circumventing the French EGalim law, are also in the sights. Two of them, which “did not comply with the provisions of the EGalim law”have received “pre-fines, on February 19, for amounts amounting to tens of millions of euros”. These “now have two months of adversarial time to put forward their arguments”. At the end of this period, “the sanctions amounting to several tens of millions of euros for these two plants will be final”concluded Mr. Le Maire, without revealing the names of the companies incriminated.
For several weeks, the government has been trying to calm agricultural anger by wielding its power of repression downstream in the agri-food sector. “The sanctions will fall quickly, they will go up to 2% of the turnover of distributors and manufacturers”, Mr. Le Maire pointed out on January 26. A few days earlier, the government had revealed that four industrialists – who had not been named – were in the administration’s sights. These groups would not have respected the provisions of the EGalim law, which provides, at the time of negotiations with large-scale distribution, a contracting of manufacturers with the agricultural upstream at purchase prices which cannot be below the costs of the producer.
But the time taken to implement these sanctions is, in reality, far removed from that of microphones and cameras. The administrative procedure provides for firstly sending “pre-injunctions” to companies. It is this type of warning that the four industrial groups put forward by the government were entitled to. But we are still far from the effective sanction. “The pre-injunctions give the company the opportunity to explain the shortcomings that are noted”, specifies Bercy. In other words, distribution groups can provide elements justifying their contractualization policy. This first phase lasts approximately one to two months.
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