The EU’s Inception Impact Assessment (IIA) on ways of tackling unfair trading practices is open for feedback from interested parties until 22nd August. This is the first step on the road to implementing the Task Force’s report published last November on unfair trading practices and lack of transparency on agricultural produce once it leaves the farm gate.

The IIA sets out a range of objectives and policy options in relation to unfair trading practices (UTPs), producer cooperation and market transparency. These include the status quo of leaving it to national governments or issuing EU guidelines that wouldn’t be legislative based.

The third option presented is EU framework legislation to protect the weaker members of the supply chain (farmers, small and medium sized enterprises. The fourth option is minimum EU framework legislation for the food chain with considerable flexibility for member states to do their own thing.

On the issue of transparency in the chain after the farm gate two options are considered. One is leaving things as they are, the other is to collect data at more levels of the food supply chain and publish.

The Commission is also in the advanced stages of preparing a full public consultation which is expected to be announced shortly and will run for 12 weeks.

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Farm unions push for legislation on Unfair Trading Practices