Sustainability: the Autorité de la concurrence publishes informal guidance on the creation of a platform for collecting and sharing data on suppliers’ carbon footprints in the French retail sector

The Autorité de la concurrence has today published informal guidance in the area of sustainability, provided under the notice adopted on 27 May 2024.

Two professional retail organisations asked the General Rapporteur for informal guidance on the creation of a platform for collecting and sharing data on suppliers’ carbon footprints in the French retail sector.

The General Rapporteur found the request to be admissible and that informal guidance could be provided.

In his letter to the requesters, the General Rapporteur recalled that products’ carbon footprint can be a competitive parameter and considered that the Low Emission Sustainable Sourcing (LESS) project could be analysed as an agreement creating a collective database unlikely to raise competition concerns. The following factors were taken into consideration: the absence of exchanges of sensitive information between competitors; the open, voluntary and non-exclusive nature of the platform; the absence of any collective commitment regarding commercial behaviour; and the absence of any ranking of suppliers according to the carbon footprint reported.

However, the General Rapporteur drew the requesters’ attention to the need to:

• provide easy access to the platform for all suppliers;
• ensure the quality of the information provided, preserve competition between existing tools and maintain the possibility for players to compete on the carbon footprint parameter;
• refrain from any exchange of sensitive information and, in particular, any coordination between competitors, including on decarbonisation strategies and communication on carbon impact or decarbonisation;
• take account of competition law when discussing and determining the conditions under which suppliers may make their decarbonisation commitments public, as such discussion and publication could be seen as exchanges of information.