Brussels, 27/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Friday 27 November, the European Commission adopted new guidelines which aim to support European farmers by clarifying how they can, under certain conditions, cooperate to jointly sell olive oil, beef and veal, and arable crops without breaching EU competition rules. These markets are worth more than €80 billion annually.
Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan said: “The guidelines are about strengthening farmers' collective position in the food supply chain. They help farmers to counter-balance the effects of increasing concentration at the processing and retailing stages of the chain.” The new guidelines complement the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of 2013.
The EU's standard competition rules ban agreements to set prices or other trading conditions or to share markets unless the agreements improve production or distribution.
The guidelines cover three derogations whereby producers of olive oil, beef, veal and arable crops can, under certain conditions, jointly sell and set prices, volumes and other aspects through the intermediary of recognised organisations. The organisations must make farmers significantly more efficient by providing them with supporting activities other than sales (e.g. storage, transport, distribution); and the volumes marketed by a given organisation must not exceed certain thresholds (20% of the relevant market for olive oil and 15% of the national market for beef and veal, and arable crops).
The new guidelines will help farmers to comply with these requirements by provding a clear definition/indication of the type of activities that can create the significant efficiencies required to benefit from the derogation and give specific examples of situations in which such activities can create significant efficiencies; give guidance on how to calculate the volumes marketed by farmers' organisations and how to check that they do not exceed the thresholds, taking into account notably natural variations over time; explain how exceptional circumstances, e.g. a natural disaster, can be taken into account when calculating the volumes marketed by farmers' organisations; and clarify the situations in which the national competition authorities and the Commission may apply the safeguard clause foreseen by the CMO Regulation. This safeguard clause allows competition authorities, in exceptional circumstances, to decide that joint sales of a farmers' organisation should be either reassessed or should not take place if the overall market is negatively affected.
The guidelines will be published in the EU Official Journal in the next few days. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)