The Spanish new Food Supply Chain Law: key highlights
Spain Agribusiness Commentary
On December 15, the Official State Gazette (BOE) published Law 16/2021, amending (once again) Law 12/2013, on measures to improve the functioning of the food supply chain (the Food Supply Chain Law or LCA, after its initials in Spanish).
The new law contains major new legislation for all the businesses participating in the food industry (affecting foreign companies for the first time). Here we analyze its key elements.
The past two years have seen a true revolution for the legislation on contracts in the food supply chain. This latest change was preceded by two other recent ones. The first, created in Royal Decree-Law 5/2020 of February 25, 2020 which we analyzed in this Garrigues Agribusiness commentary, made sweeping changes. And a few months later, Law 8/2020 brought a second change.
The stated purpose of this latest reform of the LCA, made in Law 16/2021, is to transpose into Spanish law the requirements in Directive (EU) No 2019/633 of the European Parliament and of the Council, of April 17, 2019. Although, one more time, the Spanish legislation goes far beyond the requirements in the directive and in the comparable legislation of a large majority of the member states and concerns itself with another type of rules of a protective nature, which bear no similarity to the EU instrument.
This is our analysis of some of the various items of new legislation.
Contacts
