Berlin Chili Fest press hub · 4–6 September 2026 · releases, images & samples →
European Heat Council · europeanheatcouncil.eu
← All positions

European Heat Council · Position 01

Issued 2026-06-25

Under Council authority

Defending the independent producer

The Council records the conditions under which independent food producers in the European Union now operate, and sets out the Council’s response to them.

Part I. Findings

The Council records three conditions under which independent food producers across the European Union now operate. Each is supported by sources cited at the foot of this Position.

Finding 1. Compliance burden falls disproportionately on the smallest producers.

EU food safety regulation applies a single standard to producers of all sizes, but documentation, training, and infrastructure costs scale poorly downward. The European Commission has itself acknowledged the asymmetry by publishing flexibility guidance specifically for small businesses on HACCP implementation[1]. Peer-reviewed research finds that small-scale producers in economically weaker regions often lack the financial and technical resources to comply with evolving EU regulations[2]. The Food and Agriculture Organization records the same pattern across European control systems[3].

Finding 2. Retail consolidation has produced buyer-power asymmetries small suppliers cannot meet on equal footing.

The EU recognised the structural imbalance in 2019 by adopting Directive (EU) 2019/633 on unfair trading practices in the food supply chain, prohibiting a range of payment, listing, and unilateral-amendment practices that large buyers had imposed on small suppliers[4]. The European Commission’s 2024 implementation report confirms that enforcement remains uneven across Member States and that several prohibited practices persist where suppliers and buyers nominally agree[5]. The Joint Research Centre’s 2020 Science for Policy report on EU retail alliances records that food manufacturers report unilateral demands of payment, payments requested from suppliers without adequate counterparts, and fees whose value to the supplier is open to question, characterising these as mechanisms by which buyer power can be used to extract profit from suppliers rather than to deliver services they need[6].

Finding 3. Member State enforcement of identical EU regulations varies materially.

Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed notification data shows wide variation across Member States: in 2022 Bulgaria recorded 212 notifications and 1.5 per cent maximum residue limit non-compliance, while Estonia and Lithuania recorded under 20 notifications and below 0.6 per cent non-compliance[7]. The European Economic and Social Committee has formally called for tougher EU action to curb the resulting single-market fragmentation[8]. The Commission’s own Single Market Enforcement Taskforce records, in its 2024-2025 Report, that 18 of the 25 Member States which responded to its fact-finding exercise on territorial supply constraints confirmed the existence of such practices on their territory, with the most prevalent types named as differentiation in packaging and labelling, refusal to supply, and unfair price differentiation between markets[9].

Part II. Position

On the basis of these Findings the Council holds that:

  1. The conditions above are not the result of market preference. They reflect policy choices, enforcement asymmetries, and commercial structures that would, in each case, be reversible at modest cost to the bodies that set them.
  2. The Council does not oppose retail scale, consolidation, or harmonised regulation. It opposes the asymmetry: regulatory and commercial costs falling hardest on the producers least able to absorb them, while the bodies setting those costs treat the asymmetry as a market outcome.
  3. The Council uses “independent producer” to mean a hot sauce maker whose production is owned and directed by the people who make the sauce; with no controlling share held by a retail group, food conglomerate, or holding company with parallel grocery interests; with annual production below 100,000 units per recipe; and with recipes not licensed in from a parent brand.

Part III. Commitments

Where independent producers face costs the Council judges to be asymmetric, the Council will:

  1. Publish a dated Position citing the regulation, ruling, or commercial practice in question.
  2. Submit comment in EU consultations touching producer scale, distribution, or food labelling.
  3. Provide written briefings to journalists covering the sector, free of charge and without exclusivity terms.

Revision

This Position will be reviewed annually, or sooner if a material change in EU producer policy, retail concentration, or enforcement structure occurs.

Sources

  1. [1]European Commission, Commission Notice on the implementation of food safety management systems covering Good Hygiene Practices and procedures based on the HACCP principles, including the facilitation/flexibility of the implementation in certain food businesses, OJ C 278, 30.7.2016. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:52016XC0730(01)
  2. [2]Landscape of policies, standards, approaches, and projects for EU food security: an overview, Discover Food (Springer Nature), 2025. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s44187-025-00387-6
  3. [3]Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, European Food Safety Control Systems: New Perspectives on a Harmonised Legal Basis. https://www.fao.org/4/y5871e/y5871e0l.htm
  4. [4]Directive (EU) 2019/633 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 April 2019 on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2019/633/oj
  5. [5]European Commission, Commission delivers report on the implementation of EU rules against unfair trading practices in the food supply chain, 23 April 2024. https://agriculture.ec.europa.eu/media/news/commission-delivers-report-implementation-eu-rules-against-unfair-trading-practices-food-supply-2024-04-23_en
  6. [6]Colen, L., Bouamra-Mechemache, Z., Daskalova, V., Nes, K., Retail alliances in the agricultural and food supply chain, EUR 30206 EN, European Commission, 2020, ISBN 978-92-76-18585-7, doi:10.2760/33720, JRC120271. https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC120271
  7. [7]Food Safety in the European Union: A Comparative Assessment Based on RASFF Notifications, Pesticide Residues, and Food Waste Indicators, National Library of Medicine, PMC12294240. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC12294240/
  8. [8]European Economic and Social Committee, EESC urges tougher EU action to curb single market fragmentation. https://www.eesc.europa.eu/en/news-media/news/eesc-urges-tougher-eu-action-curb-single-market-fragmentation
  9. [9]European Commission, Single Market Enforcement Taskforce, Report 2024-2025, Section 2.1 (Territorial supply constraints). https://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/smet/_docs/2025/smet-report-2025_en.pdf

Issued under Council authority. European Heat Council, 2026-06-25.

Press and policy enquiries

Contact the Council
All positions