B2B relationship - Fair principles in the food chain

Core principles on fair business relations agreed by food supply chain stakeholders, welcomed by the High Level Forum on a better functioning food supply chain

Next objective is to ensure a rapid and effective implementation of these principles, enforcing their wide application in daily B2B relations

Today, the High Level Forum on a better functioning food supply chain has welcomed a proposed set of principles to ensure fairer business relations along the food supply chain.

The High Level Forum, set up in 2010, co-chaired by Commission Vice-President Tajani and Commissioners Barnier, Cioloş and Dalli, had asked the organisations composing the core group of the experts platform on business-to-business contractual relations to identify fair and unfair practices in a consensual way on the basis of concrete and relevant examples of factual practices occurring along the chain and possibly focusing on the most positive ones.

This core group¹ included organisations along the entire food supply chain including farmers, industry processors, brand manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers, large and smaller businesses. The principles agreed through this process represent a common understanding of fairness in business-to-business relations amongst all the parties.

A consensus-driven approach has allowed the multistakeholder group to identify fair and unfair practices and, starting from those, to formulate a set of principles which aims to be applicable to all contractual relations without undermining competition in business relations. The members of the multistakeholder group have met regularly and discussed widely in order to overcome disagreements and diverging views on contractual relations. The list presented today shows that eliminating unfair practices is a common need of the whole food supply chain and that all stakeholders are willing to find effective solutions.

The support shown today by the High Level Forum is an important step which all stakeholders in the food supply chain welcome, although a formal endorsement would have been more useful to the process. But it must be continued with a thorough reflection on how best to implement and enforce these principles and make sure that they are applied in daily business relations. The group recognises that the latter is the most important phase in the process; hence it is keen to continue working together, in line with the good work done so far, and in the same spirit of cooperation. Today’s green light will make it possible to step up this work towards a framework for implementation and enforcement of the principles as a contribution to Commission work in identifying appropriate policy options as stated in Commission Communication COM(2009) 591: “A better functioning Food Supply Chain in Europe”.