The commercial operation which aims to offer, according to the Minister of the Economy Bruno Le Maire, "the lowest possible price" on a wide selection of products left to the choice of distributors, must extend until June.

It will cost "several hundred million euros" to the sector, according to the minister who sealed the agreement Monday at Bercy in the presence of the main representatives of the sector (Carrefour, Intermarché, System U, Casino, Aldi ...), with the notable exception of the leader in terms of market share, E.Leclerc.

Bruno Le Maire also announced "a food check for the most modest".

It "will be done on a territorial basis, probably the department, so as to be as close as possible to consumers and as close as possible to agricultural producers as well", he specified, assuring that "experimentation will be launched in the next few months".

To finance the "anti-inflation quarter", the brands will draw on their margins.

But some did not wait for this announcement to launch their own commercial operations, intended to attract or retain their customers in a context where consumers are looking for low prices or promotions.

The political stakes are major for the government, which has been working for months with the sector to try to control food inflation, assessed at 14.5% in one year in February by INSEE.

Tricolor logo

The terms of the operation, with this "lowest possible price", however, raise questions about the consumer association UFC-Que Choisir.

“In the absence of a regulatory definition of these prices, an allegedly + broken + price could only be the usual price”, Olivier Andrault, agriculture / food project manager for this association, explained to AFP in early February.

Mr. Le Maire assured Monday that the services of his ministry, in particular the Directorate General for Competition, Consumption and the Repression of Fraud (DGCCRF), would carry out checks in stores to ensure that distributors will not weigh the business operation on their agro-industrial or agricultural suppliers.

The products concerned will also be identifiable by a tricolor "anti-inflation quarter" logo.

And most of the commercial operations will relate to private label products, i.e. those which, like Reflets de France, Marque Repère, Marque U, are owned by the brands and do not fall within the framework of annual negotiations. with industrialists.

In exchange for this agreement, the distributors obtained from Bercy that at the end of this "anti-inflation quarter", trade negotiations with agro-industry suppliers, which ended on March 1, be relaunched. .

"We will reopen trade negotiations with the major manufacturers so that the drop in wholesale prices, which we are seeing on the markets but which has not yet been transmitted to everyday consumer products, can be translated" also into the shelves. , explained the Minister of the Economy.

© 2023 AFP