“If we negotiated day by day we could already lower prices,” argues Michel-Édouard Leclerc

This is a speech that Michel-Édouard Leclerc regularly makes: we must "revisit the overly inflationary French laws". Invited this Friday morning on BFMTV, the president of the strategic committee of the centers E. Leclerc was surprised by the fact that the population seems to “come to terms with inflation at 4%” which particularly weighs on low-income households. To remedy this, it would be necessary, according to him, to “negotiate day to day” in order to “lower prices”. A call to change the rules of the game governing exchanges between manufacturers and distributors.

Today, negotiations are “not being done sufficiently in real time,” he lamented. A situation which makes the consumer "the turkey of the joke [...], because inflation is a tax which is not discussed in Parliament, unequal, which particularly affects the poorest populations and the more deprived”. “Today, we should be in combat mode against inflation,” he said, regretting the lack of support from “Parliament, [du] Medef” and the CPME in this fight led by the executive. .

For the representative of the centers E. Leclerc, the French laws, “made during periods of deflation”, are now obsolete. Written with the best intentions to “help French agriculture and promote French preference”, they are now constraining stakeholders, for example by prohibiting promotions beyond a certain level on non-food products on the shelves, he argued. “Do you find it normal that there is a French law which requires French traders to take a minimum 10% margin on food products while inflation is at 17%? Do you find it normal that at a time when the public authorities are calling us to tell us it would be good for you to carry out operations at cost price, but that at the same time, I must limit my promotions on agricultural products , on agri-food products or even on cleaning products?”, he pretended to wonder.

For Michel-Édouard Leclerc, there is “no reason why promotions on Coke, Nutella or orange juice should be banned under the pretext of helping farmers”. Without calling into question the need to “consolidate French sectors”, the distributor suggested allowing players to “negotiate all the time. As is done everywhere in Europe. And this is so that the prices on the shelves can fall, and certainly increase in the same way, from day to day. For the moment, the drop in certain costs for manufacturers, such as cardboard, paper or electricity, does not have sufficient impact on shelf prices, argued the businessman. “For twelve months, the price of sunflower has fallen by 29%, wheat by 27% and rapeseed oil by 23% in fact but not yet in supermarkets. [...] Normally, if we negotiated day by day, we could already lower prices,” Michel-Édouard Leclerc then concluded.