“The law that bears my name is too complex,” admits Renaissance MP Frédéric Descrozaille

According to MP Renaissance, the EGAlim 3 law, which was to improve farmers’ remuneration, “goes into too much detail”. According to him, distributors are not sufficiently controlled.

“The law that bears my name is too complex”, admits Thursday January 25 on franceinfo Frédéric Descrozaille Renaissance deputy and member of the Economic Affairs Commission of the National Assembly. It refers to the latest EGAlim 3 law, which came into force on April 1, 2023, which governs relations between suppliers and distributors. The objective of the EGAlim laws (1, 2 and 3) is in particular to improve the remuneration of farmers “are unevenly applied”said the deputy.

franceinfo: We thought that the question of farmers’ income was resolved with the three successive laws since 2018, is that not the case?

Frédéric Descrozaille: No, this is not the case. On the one hand, these laws are unevenly applied. There is a phenomenon of legal evasion, that is to say distributors who move these negotiations outside our borders to free themselves from French legal constraints. The law that bears my name is too complex, in fact, because it goes into too much detail. It’s a very French disease.

The making of the law is quite sick in France. We produce far too many standards.

Frédéric Descrozaille, Renaissance deputy

at franceinfo

It would be worth simplifying it without changing what it contains, in particular, the protection of agricultural income. It would be a good way to stay within a framework of general principles, of general scope, to rewrite all regulatory power. What is suffocating farmers is a whole bunch of provisions and administrative hassles in this deluge of standards.

As a deputy, you make the law and you are also supposed to control it?

You are pointing out something that is essential. Indeed, there are two missions of parliamentarians. The passing of the law, the control of the government. Control of public action is completely insufficient and even failing. In fact, we lack time to even know what state services are doing in implementing the laws we have adopted.

The 100 controllers announced by Bruno Lemaire to go and see what is happening in mass distribution, is that enough?

I don’t know if the number is enough. What is certain is that since the law that bears my name has been in force, the control by the DGCCRF of what is happening at the moment in the negotiations in Brussels, in Madrid, in Amsterdam, is failing. I am starting a mission with a colleague from France Insoumise to monitor the application of this law. We will check with the services they have provided since April to verify the application of what we voted for.

What should the consumer expect?

What I can say as humbly as possible, because I am aware that it is a little inaudible: we have been benefiting from low prices for decades, but for decades all these economic actors have been crushing the wages of their own employees, their margins and prices. This phenomenon has been happening since World War II. In fact, we are really at the end.

The food we want, the quality in the canteens, local products, healthy products, it won’t be with the same budget as before, that’s for sure.

Frédéric Descrozaille, Renaissance deputy

at franceinfo

For example, your law provides even more protections for farmers. The cost of agricultural raw materials, meat and milk, can no longer be negotiated, neither for major brands nor for private label products. Should we expect increases?

There will be rises and falls in the coming weeks. Overall, there will be a decline in inflation. But I don’t think we’re going to get negative figures. It should end at 2, 3, 4 on private labels. Often, relations are less tense, paradoxically, between brands and producers. Because there are what we call tripartite contracts, that is to say contracts which involve producers, processors and distributors. These are brands in 2022, when prices have skyrocketed, which have better integrated agricultural price increases than national brands.

Normally, these new negotiating conditions should suit farmers. Why it does not work ?

This is insufficient because it is a sector which, for decades, has let these productivity gains slip away, which have benefited everyone and not agricultural income. It is thanks to gains in agricultural productivity over decades that we, consumers, have a food supply that represents 13% of our budget today. It was more than 40% at the end of the Second World War. It is thanks to these productivity gains that we created the heavy artillery of agro-industry and mass distribution with the hypermarket model which was a French invention. They have been giving away their productivity gains to everyone for decades.

The war in Ukraine hasn’t helped anything?

The unprecedented moment of tension that we experienced was the surge in raw material prices before the war in Ukraine and the surge in food prices since the war in Ukraine. But I don’t dare imagine what state French agriculture would be in if we had not adopted these laws. Thanks to these laws, I think we avoided the worst. I think it would be much more devastating.