News & positions

Proposed Late Payments Regulation step in the right direction towards a more resilient business environment in Europe

Brussels, 13 September 2023 – AIM welcomes the European Commission’s latest proposal unveiled yesterday to ensure a fair and competitive trading environment in Europe by cracking down on late payments in business transactions. “Fairness for All” is a principle the branded consumer goods industry has highlighted for years, to improve trading conditions in the supply chain. We have thousands of SMEs within our supply chains, whom we support daily, as well as through crisis periods, to ensure we can all deliver the highest quality and value to EU consumers. Disruptive and innovative SMEs continue to bring great brands to EU consumers, nourishing a healthy and competitive environment for all.

AIM supports the Commission’s efforts to ensure payment terms help to build a more resilient business environment in Europe and calls on the Commission to go even further and implement a coherent framework for fair trading practices. As President of the European Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen pointed out in her State of the Union Address 2023, “competition is only true as long as it is fair” and the EU “must defend against unfair practices” in the international trading environment to protect manufacturing jobs and competitiveness in Europe. This should also be the case within the EU trading environment, beyond just the DSA and the DMA as referenced in “ensuring fairness” in the digital space.

To truly achieve the political objective of “making it easier to do business in Europe”, we call upon the next European Commission to implement a coherent legal framework and align all legislative instruments on B2B fair trading practices, so that Europe’s businesses are dealing with one coherent set of rules based on Single Market principles. The Platform-to-Business (P2B) Regulation, the Late Payment Regulation, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Data Act and the Unfair Trading Practices Directive (UTPD) should form one set of coherent rules, so that all businesses can benefit from a strong and progressive regulatory framework. This will help drive Europe’s competitiveness, thereby enabling us to achieve ambitious sustainability goals.