Leclerc expects to receive subpoenas from authorities after trade talks

“We will probably receive a call” from the authorities regarding commercial negotiations with producers, Michel-Edouard Leclerc said on France Inter this Monday, although these commercial negotiations between distributors and producers ended on January 31. Negotiations that, in principle, serve to determine prices and assortment on shelves next year.

“As soon as the commercial agreements end at midnight, the next day the administration will come and download all the commercial agreements into the computers, they will do the shopping, and we will probably have a subpoena, or an order to do otherwise, or a subpoena that could lead to legal proceedings.” , – he said.

According to him, these possible sanctions are the result of “legal debates” that arise “both for the distributor and for the industrialist or farmer.” And note: “But the cases we lost are not that many. »

Following an angry movement by farmers’ unions, the government announced it wanted greater control over contracts signed as part of negotiations between distributors and producers. No contract, including for brand distributors, “will escape anti-fraud controls,” Bruno Le Maire said.

Leclerc targets large agribusiness groups

Asked about the farmers’ demonstrations against the sign that bears his father’s name, Michel-Edouard Leclerc said it was “a classic of farmers’ demonstrations since 2015.” “Every peasant demonstration ends in supermarket parking lots, a way for government authorities to diffuse tensions into space without attracting too many people” and causing only “moderate damage,” he noted. . “All the demonstration instructions, of which we have photocopies in each agricultural federation, are specifically aimed at mass distribution and Leclerc,” he assured, referring also to “a group of Renaissance deputies and modems” who target him “personally.”

According to him, “this is all the more incomprehensible to our employees because we are not the main consumers of agriculture, we purchase only a third of French agricultural products,” he further stated. “They did not go to manufacturers who buy another third party, or to collective catering enterprises. »

Michel-Edouard Leclerc also “took over” negotiations with large producers outside France, in this case in Belgium, where the Eurelec purchasing center is based, which the distributor shares with the German Rewe. “In Belgium we are in talks with Nestlé,” a Swiss group “which increased its dividend by 13%” last year, with PepsiCo, Procter & Gamble, Unilever or even Coca-Cola or the French group Pernod Ricard, he said. time, citing the double-digit increase in dividends he said these agribusiness giants are paying out to their shareholders. “When I see that they have distributed so many dividends, our customers have the right to ask them to reduce the increase or ask for a further reduction,” he said.

Last week, Emmanuel Macron estimated that these purchasing and service centers, opened in recent years by several distributors in Europe, are intended to “circumvent French law” and the government plans to tighten controls over their activities.