This was one of the concerns about consumers' purchasing power, linked to the bill proposed by Renaissance deputy Frédéric Descrozaille: that after examination of this text, in public session, major operations promotions in the beauty and hygiene department (detergents, dishwasher tablets, shampoo, baby diapers, etc.), which sometimes reach 70%, will in future be corseted within the limit of 34%.
Suffice to say that this would have greatly changed the situation for supermarket customers, who often rely on these commercial operations to offset the soaring prices in food (- 12.1% in December according to INSEE).
Let's immediately lift the suspense: three amendments (1.38 and 43) tabled to this effect having been rejected by the deputies on Wednesday evening, these super promotions will be able to continue.
Industrialists, and in particular the multinationals grouped together within the Ilec (Institute for liaison and studies of consumer industries, which brings together 70 major groups), largely behind this bill, have thus lost this round, since they wanted to limit these offers at bargain prices.
On food, they will be capped at 34%
This is the only part of this text on which they will be disappointed because, overall, the deputies have granted several of their requests.
First victory, which this time will be to the detriment of consumers: in food, promotions are limited to 34% in value (and 25% in volume), and this will continue until 2026. The bill extends this device included in the Egalim law, voted at the end of 2018, and which should have expired in April 2023.
Another device of the Egalim law: the “threshold of resale at a loss” (SRP) will continue, still until 2026, to be fixed at 10%.
Until now, if a distributor buys a product from an industrialist at price 100, he is forced to resell it on his shelves with a 10% margin, i.e. at 110. In 2018, when distributors were engaged in fierce competition tariff, this measure was intended to avoid a drop in tariffs.
A phenomenon that would have prevented the various actors in the production chain, farmers in the lead, from being well paid.
In Le Parisien, before the examination of the bill, Jacques Creyssel, the general delegate of the Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD) had denounced a "Nestlé-Coca" text allowing multinationals to "continue to sell their products more expensive ".
Once is not custom, the distributors are joined in this fight by the UFC-Que Choisir.
“For four years, the PRS measure has mainly affected items on which large retailers made small margins, and particularly “First prices”.
It was therefore applied to the detriment of the most modest households”, tackled a few days ago in Le Parisien Alain Bazot, the president of the powerful consumer association, for whom it was “time to put an end to these provisions”.
Consumers could pay more for big brand products
The (big) manufacturers have also advanced their pawns on article 3 of this bill.
The question asked was to know what happens each year, at the end of February, if, at the end of the tariff negotiations, suppliers and large retailers fail to reach an agreement.
The current system was unfavorable to the former since in the event of an impasse, it was the old tariffs that applied – which, “in these times of hyperinflation”, was unfavorable to them, recalls the text.
From now on, each other will have an additional month to agree.
And if, at the end of this period, they still do not agree on anything, “the commercial relationship is broken”.
Translate, distributor orders stop.
The impact of this provision on manufacturers is not at all the same depending on whether they are powerful… Or not: “If you are an SME, the distributor will just delist your products”, deciphers an expert.
The Federation of French Businesses and Entrepreneurs (FEEF), which represents some 1,000 small companies, sometimes family ones, was not mistaken: on January 10, it declared that it feared “effects of eviction from the shelves of SME brands” .
“Conversely, continues our expert, if you are Nutella or Ricard, therefore essential on the shelves because they cannot be substituted, the distributor will be forced to accept the new price of the manufacturer, even if it is at + 20% , to avoid a sudden break in the linear".
It cannot be ruled out that consumers will have to pay much more for their branded products, starting in the spring… The text will be examined by senators from February 4.