Paris (France) (AFP) – One month before the start of trade negotiations, which are known to be stormy, a preparatory meeting initially scheduled for October 28 is due to welcome agri-food manufacturers and distributors to Bercy on Monday, but it is boycotted by the latter.
Published on: 02/11/2026 - 10:39
The Federation of Commerce and Distribution (FCD), which represents the main brands such as E. Leclerc, Carrefour and Intermarché, announced in a press release that it would not "participate" in this preparation committee "until two fundamental requirements have been recognized and shared by all": "transparency" on the costs of agricultural raw materials and differentiated treatment for SMEs.
"We would like to participate. It's just that we want to get out of these meetings which are a theater and postures where we don't make any decisions", declared Monday morning Judith Jiguet, general delegate of the FCD, on Radio Classique.
Their absence from this meeting has not yet been recorded, she however stressed: "we still have this whole morning (to decide, Editor's note). We will see. In fact, we have set our conditions. What we would like is for us all to commit to very concrete things to facilitate these negotiations, but above all to protect the weakest links, farmers, SMEs, consumers."
The agri-food industrialists (Ania, Ilec, Culture Viande, La Coopération agricole and the poultry industries) criticized in a joint press release the absence of the FCD, believing that it “above all saves them from having to account for their own practices”.
In a separate press release, Pact'Alim, which represents SMEs and mid-sized companies in the agro-industry, believes that "the next negotiations must not reproduce the imbalances observed in recent years".
- Margins of agri-food multinationals -
Every year, from December 1 to March 1, supermarkets and food suppliers carry out negotiations, sometimes brutal, which determine shelf prices (excluding distributors' own brands) and are regularly accused of putting pressure on farmers' remuneration.
The government announced two weeks ago that it wanted to bring together the stakeholders upstream, with a view to a “responsibility pact”.
The “directives” will concern “all the actors in these negotiations”, explained Sunday the office of Minister of Commerce Serge Papin.
The cabinet also believes that the demands of the FCD are already taken into account in the new provisions of the agricultural emergency law which provides in particular that the deadline for the end of negotiations with SMEs is shorter than with the rest of the industrialists, in particular to avoid them being "the adjustment variable" at the end of the negotiation period.
A study carried out by the French firm Asterès for the FCD, published Monday, shows that the multinationals supplying mass distribution - Coca-Cola, Danone, L'Oréal... - generate net margins "nearly four times higher" than the average for the French agri-food industry.
© 2026 AFP
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