On April 16, 2026, the French Competition Authority (the FCA) issued a decision imposing a €12.67 million fine on Synadis Bio, an organic food retail trade association, and three retailers (Greenweez, Les Comptoirs de la Bio, and ITM Entreprises) for a single, complex, and continuous agreement allocating organic food brands between organic food stores and generalist supermarkets in France (the Decision).[1] The Decision confirms that brand allocation arrangements are restrictions by object and marks the second use of the FCA’s expanded fining powers against trade associations.
Background. Between 2010 and 2020, French consumer spending on organic products quadrupled to €13.2 billion. Over this period, generalist supermarkets consolidated their position as the main distribution channel for organic products in France, at the expense of specialist organic food stores. This consolidation was driven in part by the development of private label organic food ranges, and in part by the acquisition of specialist organic food chains by leading food retail groups (e.g. Carrefour’s acquisition of Greenweez, So.Bio and parts of Bio c’Bon between 2016 and 2020, or ITM’s acquisition of a stake in Les Comptoirs de la Bio in 2018).
From 2016, Synadis Bio, the national trade association for specialist organic food retailers, held a series of discussions within its Board of Directors regarding the differentiation between specialist and generalist organic food retail channels. These discussions led to amendments to the association’s internal rules, which entered into force in late 2018. Under these revised rules, eligibility criteria for membership in Synadis Bio included a prohibition on operating under a banner referring, even implicitly, to a generalist retail chain, and a requirement that at least 95% of members’ packaged organic food range consist of products distributed exclusively through specialist organic food channels.
Following the transmission of an administrative investigation report by the DGCCRF (the French consumer protection and competition enforcement directorate), the FCA opened proceedings on its own initiative in July 2021.
Brand allocation is a restriction by object. The FCA characterized the revised rules as a brand allocation agreement amounting to a restriction by object. Although the rules were framed as membership conditions, the FCA found that they operated as a collective restriction on the association members’ freedom to determine their product assortment, a key parameter of competition. By requiring members to source at least 95% of their range from products sold only in the specialist organic food channel, the rules prevented members from selling products available in generalist supermarkets, and eliminated cross-channel price comparability. The FCA relied in particular on the minutes of the Board meetings leading to the adoption of the rules, which contained repeated references to the need to prevent “brand permeability” between channels, to avoid price comparability, and to maintain the specialist organic food channel’s higher price positioning.
The FCA rejected Synadis Bio’s defence that the revised rules amounted to neutral eligibility criteria, as well as its claim that an individual exemption under Article 101(3) TFEU should be granted, for lack of substantiated efficiency gains.
Attendance at a single meeting is sufficient to establish liability. The FCA found that each of the three fined retailers had directly adhered to the strategy by participating, without publicly distancing themselves, in Synadis Bio meetings during which the anticompetitive object was openly discussed. Synadis Bio was held liable for the full duration of the infringement, while Greenweez was held liable only for the period from March 2017 to March 2018 and ITM Entreprises and Les Comptoirs de la Bio were held liable only for their participation in a single meeting held in June 2018.
The amount of the fine was based on the association members’ turnover. The FCA departed from its standard fining methodology, whereby fines are calculated as a percentage of the value of affected sales, adjusted for, among others, gravity and duration, on the ground that the parties were too heterogeneous in size, nature and role for the resulting fines to reflect each party’s role in the infringement, and instead imposed lump-sum fines: €10 million on Synadis Bio; €1.85 million on Greenweez; €740,000 on ITM Entreprises; and €80,000 on Les Comptoirs de la Bio. Carrefour SA and Les Mousquetaires were held jointly and severally liable as parent companies of Greenweez and ITM Entreprises respectively.
This is the second application of the revised Article L. 464-2 (I) of the French commercial code since its introduction through the transposition of the ECN+ directive in 2021 (after an earlier 2026 decision against the ski instructors’ union, in which the FCA imposed a €3.4 million fine for an exclusivity obligation imposed on ski instructors).[2] This revised provision sets the maximum fine for an association’s infringement at 10% of the aggregate worldwide turnover of its members active on the affected market, well beyond what can typically be imposed based on a trade association’s resources.
Members of the trade association have limited grounds to resist payment of the fine. In case Synadis Bio’s resources are insufficient to cover the full amount of the fine, article L. 464-2 (VI) of the French commercial code establishes a three-step fine recovery mechanism to require payment of the fine by the association’s members.
First, the association must issue a call for contributions to its members within six months of notification of the decision. The law does not prescribe how the burden should be apportioned among members, but they have an incentive to respond, as failure to do so exposes them to the FCA acting directly against them. Indeed, if the call for contributions does not result in full payment of the fine, the FCA may seek payment of the unpaid balance from any undertaking whose representatives sat on Synadis Bio’s Board of Directors during the infringement. If payment still remains incomplete, the FCA may then seek payment from any other member that was active on the affected market during the infringement.
A statutory defence is available to members called upon at the third step. Such members may resist payment if they can show either that they did not apply the disputed decision and were unaware of its existence, or that they actively dissociated themselves from it before the procedure against the association was opened. Practically, this means that trade association members should document any decision not to apply an association rule, and put any dissociation in writing before any enforcement steps are taken.
This mechanism raises questions as to the protection of trade association members’ rights of defence. The FCA considered that members’ rights are adequately protected, on the basis that the procedure against the association is distinct from any subsequent recovery procedure, and that a member from whom payment is sought at the second or third step would then be granted access to the file and an opportunity to submit observations. These guarantees are nonetheless limited: by the time a member is called upon to pay, the FCA’s findings on the existence and scope of the infringement, and its determination of the fine, can no longer be contested, and the member’s defence is confined to demonstrating its own non-adherence or active dissociation.
[1] Decision No. 26-D-05 of 16 April 2026 concerning practices in the organic food distribution sector.
[2] Decision No. 26-D-04 of 17 March 2026 on practices implemented in the sector of ski instruction and training.