COLEAD and the Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO) warmly welcome this vote. By endorsing the report prepared by MEP Stefano Bonaccini, the Committee has taken a decisive step toward closing existing enforcement gaps and ensuring that every farmer and small agri-food supplier—whether based inside the EU or beyond—can rely on robust protection against abusive commercial behaviour. 

The UTP Directive constitutes an essential piece of legislation to strengthen farmers’ position in the supply chain. While encouraging progress has been observed since its entry into force in 2022, enforcement remains uneven across EU Member States, and cross-border abuses have proved especially hard to tackle. Research has also shown a severe lack of effective enforcement when an EU buyer imposes abusive practices on a non-EU supplier; this leaves those suppliers exposed and, by distorting competition, harms EU producers as well. 

The report has, however, one major issue that civil society calls on the European Parliament to amend when the report is voted on in plenary session: in Article 3, containing the relevant definitions, ‘unfair trading practice with a cross-border dimension’ is defined as ‘one involving one supplier that is located within the Union and one buyer that is located outside the Union’. Excluding from the definition cases in which a buyer is located within the EU and a supplier outside of the EU is contrary to the scope of the UTP Directive. It poses a threat to the fairness and resilience of all the actors in the supply chain, as EU buyers could be tempted to prefer sourcing from non-EU suppliers who are not within the scope of this Regulation and would therefore have more obstacles to benefiting from the cooperation among enforcement authorities. This would not only damage these suppliers who would suffer from the abusive practices, but also EU suppliers who would face unfair competition.

Civil society calls on the European Parliament to amend Article 3 so that it defines ‘unfair trading practice with a cross-border dimension’ as ‘one involving one supplier and one buyer that are located in at least two different Member States or involving one party located within the Union and another party located outside the Union’.

The recently adopted report does contribute to tackling abusive practices by adding to the European Commission (EC)’s legislative proposal explicit references to the cooperation tools when it comes to tackling cross-border enforcement involving non-EU suppliers. In particular, it:

• Amends Article 3 of the EC proposal to explicitly include within the definition of ‘unfair trading practice with a cross-border dimension’ cases involving any unfair trading practice covered by stricter national rules that qualify as overriding mandatory provisions within the meaning of Article 9 of Regulation (EU) 593/2008;
• Incorporates an international dimension to Article 8 on the Notification and alert system. In particular, the AGRI Committee has opened the participation to third countries or international organisations, on the basis of agreements between the Union and those countries or international organisations; 
• Adds to the EC proposal a new Chapter IVa on the cooperation in relation to suppliers or buyers established outside the union that has the potential to boost the effectiveness of enforcement authorities who deal with cases in which one of the parties is located outside of the EU; 
• Reinforces Article 4 on resources and expertise of the enforcement authorities to set the expectation on Member States to provide the enforcement authorities with sufficient resources for the application of the Regulation and to promote awareness of the rights and obligations that it lays down, including making available clear, accessible and detailed information about its provisions to persons concerned and providing to them the advisory services needed for its application. Since the scope of the Directive explicitly covers non-EU suppliers, this provision should result in leveraging embassies, trade promotion boards and other entities’ potential to deliver this capacity building. 
  
  

Press quotes

• “Today’s vote sends a clear message that the EU will not tolerate bullying of the weakest links in our food chain. It is an important step forward, but the job will only be complete when we have evidence that farmers—wherever they are—no longer suffer the abusive practices that remain widespread.” 
  Jorge Conesa, Managing Director, Fair Trade Advocacy Office (FTAO)
• “COLEAD supports the development of new rules to address cross-border unfair trading practices (UTPs) in the agri-food supply chain. However, in relation to UTPs faced by third-country suppliers, we regret that the recent vote on the draft report in the AGRI Committee focuses solely on buyers located outside the EU, overlooking the need to protect non-EU suppliers from UTPs by EU buyers. To build inclusive, sustainable, and equitable agri-food systems, all agri-food actors, including farmers and agri-food MSMEs in low- and lower-middle-income countries, must be protected against UTPs.” 
  Jeremy Knops, Délégué Général, COLEAD