Press reports suggest that despite a formal recommendation from the Competition Commission, the UK government is delaying a decision on the appointment of a ‘supermarket ombudsman’, in response to lobbying from major retailers. The British Independent Fruit Growers Association maintains that the four biggest supermarkets, which account for 80% of the grocery market in the UK, are arguing that the appointment of a supermarket ombudsman would ‘push up the cost of food’. In the face of government equivocation and in response to lobbying from the National Farmers’ Union, the opposition Conservative Party has undertaken to appoint a supermarket ombudsman should they win the impending general election, required to take place in the first half of 2010.
freshplaza.com, 7 January 2010
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=56488
Telegraph.co.uk, 6 January 2010
http://www.freshplaza.com/news_detail.asp?id=56447
The operationalisation of practical measures such as the supermarket ombudsman being discussed in the UK is illustrative of the broader policy initiatives which are under consideration in the EU. Such measures are designed to respond to concerns about the functioning of the food supply chain in the face of a growing concentration of commercial power in the hands of supermarkets, and are being considered in the context of moves towards more ‘market-based’ systems of price formation in EU agricultural markets. It is recognised that, with price regulation increasingly a thing of the past in the EU, inequalities in power relationships along supply chains may be having a disproportionate influence on the process of price formation, to the detriment of EU farmers. This represents a new area of policy development for the EU .
Potentially, given similar concerns over the functioning of the food supply chain in many ACP regions (though for different and varied reasons), important policy lessons could be learned from this evolving EU experience with regard to the use of competition policy and the role of ombudsmen.