The CCC is part of an initiative to raise more awareness about the excessive power of retailers in Europe, and to stir the European Parliament and Commission into action to curb it.

The alliance involves thirteen organisations apart from ourselves, including Agribusiness Accountability Initiative (AAI), the Responsible Purchasing Initiative, Traidcraft, Oxfam Germany, Action Aid, Banana Link, Attac and SOMO.

Throughout the EU, retailing is increasingly dominated by a small number of supermarket chains. While there is anti-monopoly legislation to stop major producers abusing market dominance, there is no EU legislation specifically designed to tackle abuses of supermarket buyer power.

In at least eight countries of the EU, the top five supermarkets control at least 70% of all grocery sales. They are increasingly moving into other sectors too, such as clothes, home entertainment, pharmaceuticals and banking. We are also seeing the growth of European buying groups, where individual retailers in different countries join forces to purchase supplies.

This concentration means the big retailers are becoming ‘gatekeepers’ who control farmers’ and other suppliers’ only real access to EU consumers. Their market dominance means they can put the squeeze on their suppliers in terms of price and speed. This in turn puts untenable pressure on the workers in the supply chain, whether in Europe or in supplier countries across the world.

There have been steps taken to investigate and reform competition legislation within some EU member countries such as France and Germany. However, many of the big retail companies operate or co-operate across borders, and there is potential for anti-competitive collusion too. So an EU-wide perspective is needed.

The initiative wants to see in particular the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Competition investigate the impacts that this concentration of buyer power is having on suppliers, workers and consumers, and what steps should be taken to address it. The question being asked is how the EU intends to modernise its policies and close the current regulation gap relating to retailers.

To get European politicians and officials to accept that there is a problem to deal with, a "Written Declaration" (WD) was written and tabled, along with a briefing for MEPs (“The EU Retail Sector: When is a market not a market?”). The Written Declaration was tabled on October 10, 2007 and, at the Parliament’s sitting on January 31, 2008, it was signed by 439 MEPs, a majority of the Chamber. This made it an officially accepted document of the European Parliament.

As a next step in the Parliament, one of the WD’s sponsors - MEP Gyula Hegyi - is tabling an oral question on the same theme, and the Socialist group of MEPs has agreed to support this move. Also, MEPs, Commission officials and competition experts are invited to a seminar in 2008, to follow up on the issues raised in the WD.