The “law to strengthen the balance between suppliers and distributors” continues to react. Led by the Renaissance deputy Frédéric Descrozaille and adopted last March by Parliament, the text, which will enter into force in March 2024, provides for better control of the promotion of certain non-food products, such as hygiene, maintenance or perfumery.
But in a context of still marked inflation (in August it rose to 4.8% year-on-year), this law is not unanimous. Thought to help industrialists in negotiations, it is criticized by distributors and does not mean that consumer companies are now obliged to count their expenses at the supermarket.
“If we don’t have these promos, we can’t buy them”
“I take -40%, -50%, one bought the second one at half price, two bought one free,” explains Elisabeth to BFMTV, whose daily life consists precisely of finding advantageous promotions on the shelves and closely observing the price to not exceed your budget.
With the persistent inflationary context, households precisely expect a lot from these reductions to reduce their expenses. “Everything is increasing and I think it is not the right time to reduce the strength of promotions in supermarkets,” another consumer takes offense at the BFMTV microphone.
A law in favor of industrialists and manufacturers
Therefore, from the entry into force of this law in March 2024, promotions of non-food products will have a limit of 34%. A measure initially presented as a way to protect manufacturers in their negotiations with large retailers. When a distributor “makes a promotion, he will tell the manufacturer that he is obliged to accept lower prices”, deciphers Pascale Hebel, a consumer specialist. In the end, “it’s the manufacturer that reduces their margin,” she adds.
For the deputy Frédéric Descrozaille, the priority is to protect jobs and SMEs that cannot afford to lower their sales prices. The law also allows the supplier to simply stop deliveries if no agreement is reached.
In addition, the aim of this measure is also to prevent manufacturers from putting too much pressure on farmers at the end of the road. An emblematic system of the Egalim Law of 2018, the SRP+ 10, which raised the threshold of resale with losses for food product distributors to 10%, is taken up again. Specifically, if a distributor buys a product for 1 euro, the resale price on the shelves cannot be less than 1.10 euros.
In theory, the higher the margin, the more likely the dealer will be to accept the prices charged by farmers. This rule was renewed in 2025 -with the exception of fruit and vegetables-, although several doubts have arisen about its effectiveness. In July 2022, a Senate information report rightly noted several rulings:
A clamor from dealers
The protest of the large retailers was not long in coming, since the director of Carrefour, Alexandre Bompard, criticized last Tuesday in Franceinfo a law “that only benefits three large global multinationals: they will increase their margins as long as the deprivation of consumption persists.” The latter also states that currently 1 or 2 French out of 10 deprive themselves of hygiene products.
Alexandre Bompard also proposes a one-year moratorium on the application of this law, a proposal that was supported in particular by Dominique Schelcher, CEO of System U.
In response, Deputy Descrozaille described, in a letter dated August 31, this charge as a “communication operation”.
The latter evokes a resale threshold in the non-food sector located today at 18.9%, while the law allows it to be raised to 25%. A way of demonstrating that large distributors do not play the game and that large promotions do not ultimately benefit small and medium-sized companies located at the top of the chain.
Source: BFM TV
