Traduction de «Food sector » (Anglais → Français) :

Acknowledges the setting up and development of the SCI, which plays an important role in promoting cultural change and improving business ethics, and which has resulted in the adoption of a set of principles of good practice for vertical relationships in the food supply chain and a voluntary framework for the implementation of those principles which only in the second year of its operation already numbers over one thousand participating companies from across the entire EU, and those mainly SMEs; welcomes the progress made so far, and believes that efforts to promote fair trading practices in the food supply chain should make a real impact but cannot currently be considered sufficient to tackle the problem of UTPs in the food supply chain; ...[+++] stresses, however, that the effectiveness of the SCI, as recognised by both the recent Commission report and external evaluation, is undermined by a broad range of shortcomings, such as weaknesses in governance, limitations in transparency, no enforcement measures or penalties, a lack of effective deterrents against UTPs, and not allowing for individual anonymous complaints by potential victims of UTPs or own-initiative investigations by an independent body, which consequently leads to under-representation of SMEs and farmers, in particular, who may find the SCI inadequate for its purpose; recommends the setting up of similar supply chain initiatives in other relevant non-food sectors.

The ECN report on the food sector responds to requests by Members of the European Parliament for explanations about the actions taken by Competition Authorities in the food sector and ultimately to the Commission's Communication of 28 October 2009 on a better functioning food supply chain.

While they had already been active in the food sector prior to the emergence of the food price crisis in 2007, the European competition authorities have stepped up their antitrust and monitoring activities from that year onwards and answered many specific complaints about the functioning of the sector.

The report shows that the food sector has been a priority of competition authorities in Europe over the last few years and that their action has intensified since the food price crisis broke out in 2007.

Organic Food: New Regulation to foster the further development of Europe's organic food sector

The Commission report on the non-food sector carried out in compliance with the Council's 1988 requests contains the following proposals : - the setting up of a special committee to ensure greater EC co-ordination and co-operation to develop initiatives in the non-food area, - the development of a multi-annual programme of agro- industrial demonstration projects, - the enlargement of the set-aside scheme to allow a part of the land set-aside to be used for the production of cereals for non-food purposes.