Food Supply Chain (Communication)

The food supply chain comprises agricultural enterprises producing commodities, commodity exchange traders, food processing companies, (producers) and food retailers. The Commission criticises the lacking “resilience“ to boosting commodity prices (“shocks in agricultural prices“).It deems a “better functioning food supply chain“ as “urgently“ needed to avoid an “escalation“ in prices as the economic recovery sets in. In its Communication it presents measures to achieve these objectives. Amongst other things, it intends to prepare sets of standard contracts, whose use would be voluntary for the market players.

cepPolicyBrief

The market distortion in the food sector described by the Commission is not comprehensible. The alleged “escalation“ of food prices which politics ostensibly ignores is mere alarmism. The EU should limit its action to the removal of impediments to the internal market and leave the protection of competition to competition authorities. The EU-wide harmonisation of food standards, however, creates an added value.