Com­pan­ies act­ing in the food sup­ply chain for 2021 should re­vise their sup­ply agree­ments and har­mon­ise their busi­ness prac­tices with the new na­tion­al laws im­ple­ment­ing Dir­ect­ive (EU) 2019/633 on un­fair trad­ing prac­tices in B2B re­la­tion­ships in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al and food sup­ply chain. The un­fair trad­ing prac­tices (so-called UT­Ps) scheme must be trans­posed to na­tion­al le­gis­la­tions by 1 May 2021. WHAT? The UT­Ps scheme seeks to com­bat B2B prac­tices in the ag­ri­cul­tur­al and food sup­ply chain that grossly de­vi­ate from good com­mer­cial con­duct, are con­trary to good faith and fair deal­ing, and are uni­lat­er­ally im­posed by one trad­ing part­ner on an­oth­er. In short, the in­ten­tion of the rules is to shield ag­ri­cul­tur­al pro­du­cers or any nat­ur­al or leg­al per­son selling ag­ri­cul­tur­al and food products from UT­Ps. The Dir­ect­ive en­vis­ages that na­tion­al laws will ap­point com­pet­ent au­thor­it­ies to en­force the UTP rules. WHO? The rules are not auto­mat­ic­ally ap­plic­able to all sup­pli­er-buy­er re­la­tion­ships. The rules ap­ply when there is a sig­ni­fic­ant im­bal­ance in ne­go­ti­ation power, which is as­sessed by com­par­ing the an­nu­al turnovers of the parties. HOW? Pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ures for de­term­in­ing busi­ness re­la­tion­ship con­di­tions must be ap­plied since na­tion­al laws have a wide dis­cre­tion in de­fin­ing the UT­Ps, provided that at least those spe­cified in the Dir­ect­ive are in­cluded. The list of UT­Ps is di­vided in­to prac­tices that are al­ways for­bid­den (e.g., pay­ment peri­ods longer than 30 or 60 days (de­pend­ing on the type of products), uni­lat­er­ally chan­ging cer­tain terms of a sup­ply agree­ment, etc.) and those for­bid­den de­pend­ing on the cir­cum­stances (e.g., re­quir­ing the sup­pli­er to bear the costs of dis­counts or ad­vert­ising, or to ac­cept back un­sold products without the ob­lig­a­tion of the buy­er to pay for them or for their dis­pos­al).

Oc­to­ber 2018 1. Where can one find pub­lic pro­cure­ment no­ti­fic­a­tions for Ser­bia? Pub­lic Pro­cure­ments Portal: ht­tp://portal.ujn.gov.rs/De­fault.as­px­In­ter­net sites of re­spect­ive con­tract­ing au­thor­it­ies 2...

Pub­lic pro­cure­ment is a power­ful tool for gov­ern­ments try­ing to cre­ate dy­nam­ic, in­nov­at­ive and sus­tain­able mar­kets, eco­nom­ies and so­ci­et­ies. Ac­cord­ing to the European Com­mis­sion, “every year, over 250,000...

The Ser­bi­an Com­mis­sion for Pro­tec­tion of Com­pet­i­tion (the „CPC“ ) an­nounced its in­ten­tion to con­duct an in­quiry in­to the re­tail mar­ket in late Novem­ber 2016. The an­nounced sec­tor in­quiry­is now of­fi­cial...