Contracts in the agri-food supply chain within the framework of the new Common Agricultural Policy

The paper is focused on the measures provided for under new EU regulations in an attempt to address the problems arising for the agricultural producers by the CAP reforms of 2003 and 2013; with these reforms the Community radically modified the framework of its agricultural policy, substantially eliminating the (already reduced) forms of market management and making further substantial cuts in the amount of coupled support in favour of an almost sudden (and improvised) switch to a system of direct payments to farmers, largely decoupled from production, as a means of supporting the income of agricultural producers. As a result, the latter suddenly found themselves exposed and forced to operate not on a European scale but rather in a global market, and what is more without any forms of protection. These “new” factors have therefore aggravated the fragility of the agricultural sector, especially in the trade relations with counterparty buyers. The economic and cultural leap that the newly defined CAP implied for farmers was enormous and above all took place with a minimal transition period, as well as in the absence, for the most part, of adequate education and information about the new rules. The dismantling of the basic framework of the CMO (including price support and export refunds) has thus necessarily entailed introducing new instruments to protect agricultural producers: in the absence of any protection measure, they would be unable to survive in a particularly competitive world context in which European agriculture is at a disadvantage. The paper examines the provisions of EU Regulation No. 1308/2013 concerning agricultural and interbranch associations; the rules concerning the possible formalisation of contracts concluded with first purchasers of agricultural products; and the legislation concerning the power of POs to engage in contractual negotiations. The protection of agricultural producers is thus no longer – or not only – provided by instruments of public law, though these are present and take on a central role in the system. It progressively also involves reliance on contractual arrangements of a different nature and raison d'être, but which in any case are designed to furnish support to farmers, objectively the weakest party within the agricultural market. The paper ends with some brief considerations concerning the relationship between the rules governing supply contracts and agricultural associations and EU competition law, in particular as regards the specific antitrust provisions applicable to the agricultural sector following the reform of 2013.