Organised by the Commission on 7 April 2025, Stakeholder Dialogue on Territorial Supply Constraints (TSCs) gathered retailers, manufacturers, consumers, and EU countries through different authorities in addition to representatives of European institutions. Altogether over 250 participants attended the meeting, in person and online.
Against the backdrop of the investigations carried out by the Directorate-General for Competition in recent years and the Directorate-General Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs fact-finding with EU countries within SMET, the Stakeholder Dialogue was organised to listen to stakeholder’s views on the matter.
Discussions were based on concrete examples of practices and products. They focused on the three practices reported as the most frequent
- refusal to supply
- differences in labelling and packaging for identical products
- differences in prices between EU countries
They fragment the single market, depriving consumers of product choice and competitive pricing. In some cases, it appeared that territorial supply constraints may be justified by business reasons.
The Stakeholder Dialogue also gave the opportunity to discuss existing instruments in some EU countries which could be used to address TSCs. It revealed difficulties in identifying a definitive solution.
These exchanges will feed into the reflections on the Single Market Strategy to be published in May 2025.
