“We will probably have summons” from the authorities in connection with commercial negotiations with manufacturers, Michel-Édouard Leclerc said on France Inter this Monday, while these commercial negotiations between distributors and manufacturers ended on January 31.
Negotiations which serve, in principle, to determine the price and the assortments found on the shelves for the coming year.
“As soon as the commercial agreements are finished at midnight, the next day the administration comes and pumps all the commercial agreements into the computers, they will do their shopping and probably we will have summons, either injunctions to do otherwise, or summons which could lead to to trials,” he said.
According to him, these possible sanctions are the result of “legal debates” which arise “as much for the distributor as for the industrialist or the farmer”.
And to note: “But there are not many cases that we have lost.
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Following an angry movement by farmers' unions, the government announced that it wanted to strengthen control of contracts signed as part of negotiations between distributors and manufacturers.
No contract, including for distributor brands, “will escape the control of the repression of fraud”, declared Bruno Le Maire.
Leclerc targets major agribusiness groups
Asked about the farmers' demonstrations targeting the sign that bears his father's name, Michel-Édouard Leclerc considered that it was "a classic of the farmers' demonstration since 2015".
“Every peasant demonstration ends in the parking lots of hypermarkets, it is a way for the public authorities to divert tensions onto spaces without too many people” and only causing “moderate damage,” he noted. .
“All the demonstration instructions, of which we have photocopies, in each agricultural federation, specifically target mass distribution and Leclerc,” he assured, also referring to “a group of Renaissance and MoDem deputies” who are targeting him “personally.” ".
According to him, “it is all the more incomprehensible for our employees as we are not the main customers of agriculture, we only buy a third of French agricultural products”, he further declared.
“They did not go to manufacturers who buy another third party, or to collective catering companies.
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Michel-Édouard Leclerc also “assumed” to negotiate with large manufacturers outside France, in this case in Belgium, where the Eurelec purchasing center is based that the distributor shares with the German Rewe.
“In Belgium, we are negotiating with Nestlé”, a Swiss group “which increased its dividends by 13%” last year, with PepsiCo, Procter&Gamble, Unilever or even Coca-Cola or the French group Pernod Ricard, he said. listed, each time citing double-digit increases in dividends paid, according to him, by these agribusiness giants to their shareholders.
“When I see that they have distributed so many dividends, our buyers are justified in asking them to lower their increases or to ask for further reductions,” he said.
Emmanuel Macron estimated the previous week that these purchasing and service centers opened by several distributors in recent years in Europe aimed to “circumvent French law”, and the government planned to strengthen controls on their activities.