COMPETITION • FRENCH LAW • PRICE TRANSPARENCY
To reflect the particular situation of products whose cost is highly dependent on fluctuations in the price of agricultural and food raw materials, the legislature required in Article L. 441-8 of the Commercial Code that certain contracts contain, subject to an administrative fine, a price renegotiation clause allowing for these fluctuations “whether upwards or downwards”. The EGalim Law of 30 October 2018 supplements these provisions by specifying that not only agricultural and food raw materials, but also the agricultural and food products themselves, may be affected by price fluctuations.
Initially, the contracts concerned were those with a duration of more than three months relating to the sale of products included in the list provided for in the second paragraph of former Article L. 442-9. The Macron Law of 6 August 2015 then extended the scope of the law to private label products. The EGalim Law further expanded the scope of Article L. 441-8, which now covers any agricultural and food product appearing in a list set by decree.
