At-cost food basket: the Senate says no, and the cost of living still awaits an answer

On Thursday 22 October, the Senate rejected the bill tabled by Green senator Antoinette Guhl aimed at guaranteeing access to a basket of healthy products sold at cost price in large supermarkets. According to the vote record published by the Senate, Article 1, the core of the scheme, was voted down by 227 votes to 112, before Article 2 met the same fate.

The facts

According to Public Sénat, the text would have required stores of more than 400 m² belonging to a chain with at least five outlets to offer at least 80 products at cost price. These products would have been chosen from those recommended by the National Nutrition and Health Programme: fruit and vegetables, whole grain starches, pulses, fish. The cost price would have included handling, storage, staff and energy costs, and the text prohibited passing the cost of the measure on to producers.

The Economic Affairs Committee had already rejected the bill on 14 October, Agra reports. An identical text has been tabled in the National Assembly by Green MP Boris Tavernier. The breakdown of the vote shows a clear divide: Socialist, Communist, Green and RDSE senators voted in favour, while the Les Républicains, centrist, RDPI and Les Indépendants groups voted against.

The context is well known. As Public Sénat points out, food prices have risen by around 26% since early 2021. At a Senate hearing in December 2025, UFC-Que Choisir, based on data from the Observatory of Price and Margin Formation, put forward margins of up to 44% on fresh fruit and 77% on vegetables.

The positions at stake

Opponents of the text do not deny the problem. The finding of food insecurity was shared across all benches, notes Public Sénat. Their objections are of a different nature. The committee judged the measure disproportionate with regard to freedom of enterprise and to the principle, set out in the Commercial Code, that prices result from competition. LR senator Joseph Francis argued that the law should not set companies' prices and that the root causes should be tackled. Several senators doubted that a cost price could be calculated and monitored.

The RDPI group, through Ryan Persaud, feared that the basket would favour cheap imports at the expense of French farmers and fishers. Others feared that local shops, not covered by the text, would come under pressure to match these prices. These risks are real: a poorly calibrated reform could shift margins elsewhere.

The government, represented by junior minister Anne Le Hénanff, said it shared the "ambition" of the text while opposing it. According to Public Sénat, it favours an incentive-based approach towards large retailers, the content of which has not been specified.

The text's supporters, for their part, rely on solid parliamentary work. Antoinette Guhl was the rapporteur of the Senate inquiry committee on the margins of manufacturers and large retailers, chaired by centrist Anne-Catherine Loisier. Its report, adopted in May 2026 after 189 hearings, describes an unbalanced distribution of value in favour of the downstream end of the chain, a market dominated by three large purchasing groups and an enforcement of the EGalim laws judged insufficient: seven of the eight penalties imposed on purchasing centres between 2019 and 2025 reportedly were not enforced.

The analysis

There is something paradoxical about this vote. The Senate, which leans mostly to the right, produced a severe diagnosis of the practices of large retailers, then rejected one of the first tools proposed to respond to it. One can debate the tool. One cannot leave the diagnosis without follow-up.

A certain tradition of the republican right has never confused a market economy with an absence of rules. The State was the guarantor of the general interest, including in the face of economic powers, and access for all to decent food was a matter of national cohesion more than of competition alone. When low-income households cut back on fruit and vegetables while, according to consumer associations, processed products are said to serve as loss leaders, this is not just a question of purchasing power. It is a question of public health and of equality in prevention.

The technical objections are real, but they call for answers, not a burial. Is monitoring a cost price difficult? The inquiry committee's report proposes precisely to make back margins transparent, to display margins on unprocessed products and to strengthen the Observatory of Prices and Margins. The risk for French producers? It can be addressed through origin criteria and through the contracting provided for by EGalim. As for the government's incentive-based approach, it will only be worth something if it is measurable.

What now?

A path to compromise exists. Parliament could adopt without delay the report's recommendations that have achieved consensus, then set large retailers a quantified target for lowering prices on a basket of recommended products, publicly monitored by the Observatory of Prices and Margins. If the target is not met within one year, the law could take over.

Boris Tavernier's text may give the National Assembly an opportunity to reopen the debate. One simple question remains, put to all the groups that acknowledged the urgency on Thursday: if not this basket, then what concrete measure, and by when?

Article written with the help of artificial intelligence.