Food and drink industry welcomes progress on UTP trilogue, calls for tougher rules on retail alliances

As EU trilogue negotiations on the Unfair Trading Practices (UTP) Directive continue, FoodDrinkEurope urges lawmakers to go further in strengthening protections for Europe's farmers and food and drink makers.

Ahead of Wednesday's trilogue, Europe's food and drink industry is pleased to see broad agreement between the co-legislators on the need to tackle cross-border UTPs. We now urge national policymakers to double down on those unfair trading practices carried out by alliances of buyers that have a cross border purchasing strategy, typically large retail buying alliances. This would make a measurable impact towards ensuring fairer, more consistent enforcement across the EU food supply chain.

To protect European farmers and food producers from non-EU buyers, we encourage further consideration of the obligation for those players to appoint an EU-level contact point to improve accountability and enforcement beyond EU borders.

FoodDrinkEurope also calls on policymakers to broaden the scope of the UTP Directive, to address ongoing power imbalances in the chain. Unfair is unfair, regardless of company size, which is why we support the removal of the €350 million turnover threshold, to ensure equal protection for all suppliers.

We now look ahead to the Commission's upcoming evaluation of the UTP Directive, and stand ready to contribute to a constructive and effective revision.