Farmers win more than 10-year battle at the European Commission

With its vote on 25 October on 'Unfair trading practices in the food supply chain', the European Parliament has taken the first steps to end the long-standing oppression of food producers by large retailers and processors. Immediately after this vote, negotiations have started to create a single and binding framework for all EU Member States to restrict retailers and large processors.

The proposal aims to protect the position of small food producers – farmers and farmers' cooperatives – from trading conditions that are binding on only one party to the transaction. The Commission's proposal distinguishes two types of trading practices that will be covered by the new EU regulation.

The first group includes trade practices that are prohibited under all circumstances. The commission cites late payments for delivered food (especially perishable products), last-minute order cancellations, unilateral changes to delivery terms, or claims for damages for unsold food in cases where the supplier was not at fault as the most common violations.

The second group would include trade practices that would be prohibited unless explicitly, clearly and unambiguously stipulated in supply contracts, such as returning unsold food to the supplier. Similarly, unless otherwise stipulated in the contract, traders would be prohibited from demanding payment from the supplier for placing a product in a special place on the store shelf, as well as for product promotion or marketing activities.

One of the most visible organizations in the fight to protect the position of farmers is COPA-COGECA, the European organization of farmers and farmers' cooperatives, whose president Pekka Pesonen emphasizes the importance of this decision. ''There are millions of suppliers in Europe who have to cooperate with a handful of traders, so it is clear that farmers have no real power in these negotiations. From my personal experience, I can say that in negotiations with traders, I have been thrown out of the negotiating room several times, but later invited back, because at that time I represented the Finnish dairy company Valio, and traders cannot live without such production volumes. Ordinary farmers do not have such a luxury.''

Maira Dzelzkalēja-Burmistre, Deputy Chairwoman of the Board of the Farmers' Council of the Association, also emphasizes, that this is the result of very long and hard work, from which both consumers and all European farmers will benefit. “Achieving such changes at the European level is hard and intensive work. We are pleased that we were also able to help COPA-COGECA with our work and influence in Europe, as a result of which the struggle that has lasted more than 10 years is finally at the finish line. There is also a trend in Latvia where small food producers are at a loss in negotiations with traders – they play by our rules, or they don’t play at all. This also creates paradoxical situations where farmers sell milk for 20 euro cents per liter, but consumers buy it in stores for a euro. For this reason, we are losing a large part of rural producers who would gladly sell not only raw materials – grains, milk and meat, but also products with added value – bread, cottage cheese and sausage. However, faced with powerlessness in negotiations about the sale of products, farmers choose not to engage in production or continue to sell unprocessed agricultural products. Such a food chain model also catastrophically slows down the entry of new people into production. That is why we hope that the last stage – the trialogue between "The negotiations between the Commission, Parliament and the European Council will proceed quickly and with high quality."

The vote took place on 25 October, with a total of 616 MEPs voting, of which 418 were in favour, 170 against, and 18 abstained. The final phase involves negotiations between the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council.