Three questions with Else Groen on the first 100 days of the new European Commission

The first 100 days were a bit of a “déjà vu”. At the beginning of the last 5-year EU legislative period, 2019 to 2024, the COVID crisis hit. This crisis was followed by the war on Ukraine, the energy crisis, the climate crisis, farmers’ protests, ongoing inflation…, it seems we never really got out of the crisis mode and so this new mandate also started in crisis mode, further exacerbated by the US elections, the trade war and the ongoing geopolitical shift. On top of that, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wanted to respond rapidly to the political shift to the right that took place in the EU in the last couple of years, also reflected in the new constitution of the Parliament. So, despite her always composed manner, the first 100 days were rather hectic, fully reflecting her intentions for “a bolder, faster Union”.

Of the areas in focus during the first 100 days, EU competitiveness, free trade and security, in particular food security, are of most interest to our sector. Food security entailed a new Vision for Agriculture and Food, a plan to support European farmers, protect our food security, and ensure the future of farming and food in Europe. Whilst these are worthy goals, we have to ensure that the need and effect of bold and fast measures in favour of farmers are well and fairly assessed and not to the detriment of our sector. Unfortunately, too often EU policy makers, like their national counterparts, do not grasp fully the complexity of the food supply chain. It is our task as a European Association, to address these misconceptions. We are therefore actively communicating on the food supply chain, for instance on the low margins of our sector, or on the unfair practices of large international branded food manufacturers to inform policy makers in order to pre-empt unfounded decisions.

I am pleased to see that quite a few proposals from our Manifesto – a kind of “political wish list” of our key asks from EU policy makers for this new legislative period – are already taken into account in the Commission’s strategy and programme. For example, we asked for boosting the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and strengthening of the Internal Market, which have now become general objectives of the EU. This is reflected in the “Competitiveness Compass”, a strategy for the competitiveness of the EU which the Commission published in January, and in the Single Market Strategy, the publication of which is now imminent.

Also, we asked in our Manifesto for a smooth digital and green transition for SME retailers, for instance by focusing on implementation, instead of new regulation, since a record number of legislative initiatives was published during the last mandate. I therefore appreciate that the Commission programme for 2025 contains a very limited number of new legislative initiatives that would directly impact the cooperative business model and the independent retail sector. And, we strongly welcome, the Commission’s ambition to reduce administrative burdens by at least 25% for firms and 35% for SMEs; we are trying to incite EU policy makers to reduce any type of burdens further, for the benefit of competitiveness.

In this context, the “Omnibus Initiatives” foreseen in this year’s programme are a very interesting development. These are initiatives that envisage better alignment of, and simplification and burden reduction in, a number of recently adopted EU laws. The programme foresees three of these initiatives, but we, and many other industry stakeholders, are seizing this opportunity to reduce other burdens for our members by demanding getting more EU laws amended. For example, we welcome the first Omnibus proposal on the Non-financial Reporting and the Due Diligence Directives.

There is clearly a momentum to improve the business environment in the EU. The challenge is: How to go about this without completely frustrating companies’ planning and investments into new legislation, and to find the right balance between competitiveness and sustainability.

What is missing will partly depend on the detail of the strategies that the EU is currently developing. A few issues already come to mind:

For instance, a revision of the definition of SMEs. The EU wishes to set a definition of midcap companies, i.e. companies larger than SMEs and smaller than large companies. Although we have no objections to this, since this could in future serve as a means for reducing burdens for this size of companies as well, we believe that, to preserve SMEs’ competitiveness, it is crucial to revise the SME definition in light of inflation over the 30 years the definition has been in place. This is important for our sector as retailers, as high employment, high turnover sector, easily fall out of the scope of these definitions. We are actively pursuing this objective, but at the moment I see no willingness on the Commission side to consider this.

We also hope to see whether the new EU simplification agenda will be extended to the discussion on the Green Claims Directive, a proposal made to increase the reliability of environmental claims, but which may result in heavy bureaucracy and in practice slow down investments in sustainability. We recently wrote a letter to the responsible Commissioners on this.

Certain other things that are in the pipeline but have not yet materialised, are measures against territorial supply constraints (TSCs) imposed by large food manufacturers or the establishment of a Digital Euro which will have to be accepted in shops. Also important, I hope that the proposed regulation on late payments will finally be dropped completely, as a majority of EU countries oppose this poorly conceived proposal.

These are just a few examples of issues for which we are currently advocating.