Berlin – Do we Germans buy our food too cheap? Do neck steak, milk, beer ham and sliced cheese have to become more expensive?
YES, say Greens, animal rights activists and farmers’ organizations! “This price dumping in the supermarket makes me angry,” says Green Party boss Robert Habeck (50) in BILD am SONNTAG: “The federal government must prohibit this!”
This is exactly what Chancellor Angela Merkel (65, CDU) wants to do today!
Together with Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier (61, CDU) and Minister of Agriculture Julia Klöckner (47, CDU), Merkel invites you to the summit at the Chancellery. Topic: “Questions about fair structuring of the value chain for agricultural products”.
Lidl, Aldi, Rewe, Edeka represent 85 percent of the German food retail trade
In plain language: The government wants farmers to get more coal for their products in the future. The managers of the four largest supermarket chains Lidl, Aldi, Rewe, Edeka are invited. Together they represent 85 percent of German food retail!
This is exactly the problem, market guards at the Federal Cartel Office believe! The accusation: the discounter giants are using their power to push food purchase prices ever further.
The result: farmers and middlemen could hardly survive. Animal and plant protection are becoming increasingly difficult to guarantee. Agriculture Minister Julia Klöckner says: “Chicken legs for 20 cents per 100 grams, that’s indecent.”
But: What should the neck steak summit at the Chancellery change?
Minister Altmaier wants “in dialogue” to explore “how reasonable prices can be achieved in the market for food of good quality and high standards”.
► After extensive demonstrations and road blockades by the farmers’ associations, Klöckner is more combative: “In order to put an end to unfair trading conditions”, she also wants to “take regulatory action” when in doubt.
► Discounters and retailers, on the other hand, do not understand the excitement: “We do not squander food,” says the HDE retail association.
Trade is not responsible for structural problems in agriculture
► HDE President Josef Sanktjohanser (69) on BILD: “The political boilers of the past few days” are over the top, trade is not responsible for “structural problems in agriculture”.
And: “The freedom to set prices and intense price competition” are the principle of our market economy. Any restriction by the state is “always to the detriment of consumers”.
Germany is already around two percentage points above the average of the 28 EU member states (still counting on Great Britain) when it comes to food prices, according to the HDE. There can therefore be no question of “dumping”.
But the fact is also that Germans only spend 9.5 percent of their consumption on food. For comparison: there are 12 in the French and even more than 26 percent in the Romanians. Merkel’s summit at the Chancellery is unlikely to change much today.
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