France and Germany want to ban shrinkflation

Both the French and German government want to ban shrinkflation. They call manufacturers reducing the content of products to camouflage price increases – at the very least – “misleading”.

Bill

The German Minister for Consumer Protection, Steffi Lemke, wants to act against hidden price increases in supermarkets with a new law that aims to ban both packaging of the same size with reduced content, as well as larger packaging with the same content. “This is where consumers are being misled“, the minister told Handelsblatt, adding that she also considers the practice unacceptable from the point of view of waste prevention.

In France, it is Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire who wants to impose a ban, immediately finding support from Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne. From November, they demand that producers always explicitly state changes in content on the label.

Reactions are not all equally thrilled: especially liberal sources say that the measure is unnecessary, while the producers state that shrinkflation is actually a very limited problem. Jean-Philippe André, head of the French food federation ANIA, earlier stated that it is barely about 0.2 % of supplied goods.