Today, FoodServiceEurope has submitted to the European Commission its position on the proposal for a Directive on unfair trading practices in the food supply chain, in the context of the feedback period introduced by the better regulation agenda.

FoodServiceEurope believes that fostering fair contractual relations amongst all actors in the supply chain is essential to provide high-quality, safe, and affordable food to consumers. Therefore, the contract catering sector supports balanced initiatives to strengthen the position of farmers and SMEs in the food supply chain. However, any initiative at EU level has to be justified and proportionate in order to achieve this stated objective.

The Commission’s proposal for a Directive to address unfair trading practices in the food supply chain does not sufficiently consider the specificities of the contract catering sector and its unique position in the food supply chain. In particular:

(i) The prohibition for buyers to agree with their suppliers on payment terms of more than 30 days for perishable products would be disproportionately burdensome for contract catering operators, who do not enjoy equivalent protection in respect of their clients. Clients, especially public-sector entities, often operate on much longer payment terms and rarely on 30 days. This means operators in the contract catering sector would be unfairly squeezed between their buyers, often public authorities outsourcing catering services, and their suppliers. Operators in the food supply chain should thus be able to retain the possibility to agree on longer payment terms, adapting contracts to the concrete realities of the market.

(ii) In addition, for the proposal to reflect the legislator’s intent, the definition of “perishable food products” should be limited to fresh food products and food products with a short shelf-life.

(iii) The proposal does not expressly cover public authorities that buy food products to provide services equivalent to those performed by private sector contract catering operators. This would potentially create an additional distortion to competition in the market. This needs to be addressed, either through the unambiguous inclusion of public authorities within the scope of the Directive or through the exclusion of contract catering services overall from the entire scope of the proposal.

(iv) If contract catering companies are to be covered by the scope of the directive when they act as buyers, this should also be the case when they are suppliers in order for the directive to cover the food supply chain in its entirety. We thus call to extend the scope of the proposal to cover also the provision of food services in business-to-business relations.