Yesterday, the European Parliament approved the provisional agreement resulting from interinstitutional negotiations on cross-borders unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain.
With 555 votes in favour, none against and 26 abstentions, Members of the European Parliament gave their final approval to new rules requiring national authorities to work together to tackle unfair trading practices. The objective is to ensure that farmers are fairly paid for their work. As a result, cross-border unfair trading practices that harm farmers and small agricultural producers will be prevented, investigated and sanctioned.
Farm Europe welcomes the work of Commissioner Hansen alongside rapporteur Stefano Bonaccini as well as the Danish Presidency on this long awaited improvement of the internal market. This text will help improve farmers’ position in the agrifood supply chain and enhance transnational cooperation in case suppliers and buyers are in different Member States. It will be an important milestone, to be completed through the upcoming broader revision of the Directive on UTPs – at least extending the list of UTPs (black list) and simplifying the rules governing complaints and sanctions – and in parallel through an effective conclusion of the trilogue negotiations on the proposals to rebalance the functioning of the food supply chain and better protect EU farmers, in the context of the reform of the Common Market Organisation (CMO), to clarify contractual relations.
Concretely, the new rules approved by MEPs today support the following objectives:
- Stopping cross-border unfair trading practices on member states’ initiative
- Tackling unfair trading practices by buyers located outside the EU
- Exchanging cross border information
The provisional agreement now needs to be approved by Council. It will apply 18 months after being published in the EU Official Journal.
O artigo foi publicado originalmente em Farm Europe.
