SPAIN-FRANCE: Protests Mask Fight for Food Market

By Tito Drago Reprint | | Print |

Tito Drago

MADRID, May 27 1997 (IPS) - The burning of Spanish lorries and other incidents caused by French farmers on the frontier between the two countries is more than a mere sectoral dispute, in fact hiding a tough battle for the EU food markets.

Spain’s agriculture minister, Loyola de Palacios, protested to her French counterpart, Philippe Vasseur, over the increase of official controls on the trucks carrying fruit and vegetable exports to France.

Meanwhile, the European Commission (the EU executive body) will, on Thursday, be looking into measures to take against France in retaliation for attacks against the lorries.

The most obvious immediate motives behind the conflict are that Spanish produce is being sold at lower prices than the French. The French farmers said the Spanish are basically practicing disloyal competition or “dumping.”

In reality, the cause of the conflict is far deeper and can be summed up as a fight to dominate the European food market.

Countries like Israel and Morocco are also hoping to increase their quota, but as they are outside the EU their capacity to compete is reduced to the conditions of the trade agreements, which establish import and export quotas.

But Spain and France are in equal conditions as they are both full members of the EU. Both economies characterised by large value taxes on their agricultural products, as they have strong agro-food industries.

In 1996, for the first time in a decade, the Spanish-French agricultural and food trade was favourable to Spain, which registered a surplus in its trade balance in the sector with the with the neighbouring country to a value of approximately 20 million dollars, with sales worth more than three billion dollars.

Francisco Marin, leader of the Confederation of Farming Cooperatives of Spain, rejected the denunciations of disloyal competition and stated its improved conditions were due to the quality of the land, the climate, experience and productive technology.

These differences, he said, allowed the Spanish products, like potatos and strawberries to arrive on the French market before the harvest began in France.

The competition from Spanish farming and food is also making itself felt with cucumbers, sweet peppers, fish and seafood.

The French administrative controls over the Spanish trucks aim to block trade, by slowing them down for a long time on the border, which in itself implies an increase in costs. But they also influence the quality of the product.

By way of response, the independent government of Andalucia, the region of Spain most affected by the conflict, also imposed controls on the French lorries, but only intermittently.

Spain’s farmers organisations announced a campaign against the French products to “hit them where it hurts most, in their wallets.”

Thus they informed all consumers that products with bar codes beginning with numbers between 30 and 37 were French, even if the codes are stuck on in other countries.

The Spanish producers want their campaign to be taken up by companies having large commercial floorspace – the super and hyper markets – and for French produce not to be sold.

However, the two largest Spanish consumers’ organisations are against these measures, as they claim they could be counterproductive. The conflict, they say, must be resolved by negotiations in the European Union organisms, in order to avoid even worse effects.

These organisations, and also the Spanish entrepreneurs of the farming and food sector are aware that many of the biggest supermarkets in fact belong to, or are controlled by French companies.

These calls for calm, the firmness and the negotiation have not managed to quell the demonstrations by Spanish farmers.

This Tuesday, hundreds of them filed past the French consulates in Seville and Cartagena, with the throwing of tons of tomatoes and dozens of eggs, as a sign of protest and rejection.