The Senate will reject mandatory quotas on Czech food

Quotas for the sale of Czech food in large stores will not apply. According to the agreement, the Senate will reject them on Thursday and return the food law back to the Chamber of Deputies. Senators are worried about higher prices or the unavailability of certain foods. Czech Television has found that the required 101 deputies will not vote in favor of quotas in the Chamber of Deputies. Again, neither party will support them.

The store in Prague's Stodůlky sells about half of the food from the Czech Republic. From next January it was supposed to be 55 percent, by 2028 even 73 percent. Mandatory quotas were to apply to all shops with more than 400 square meters.

Lidlu spokesman Tomáš Myler said, the introduction of such a high quota can mean great capacity problems for the entire market, for the entire range, then of course there may be pressure to reduce the quality of individual products.

MEPs wanted more than half of potatoes, tomatoes, onions, meat, sausages and more than 120 other foods to come from the Czech Republic. But senators will reject the proposal at Thursday's meeting.

In the upper house of parliament, the three strongest senatorial clubs, which have a clear constitutional majority, reject mandatory food quotas. For example, they fear that quotas would make food more expensive in shops.

The chairman of the senatorial club ODS and TOP 09 Zdeněk Nytra said, Czech agriculture is not able to produce food in specified amounts, it would mean an increase in prices, a reduction in supply for consumers.

According to Senate Vice President Jan Horník (STAN), quotas would run counter to a European regulation. The head of the senatorial club KDU-ČSL and independent Šárka Jelínková believes that this would greatly limit the range and offer of goods.

She said, we don't want to go back some decades.

The House will thus have to negotiate the mandatory quotas again. For the first time, MEPs approved food quotas on 20 January this year. Legislators of the SPD, the Communists, the CSSD and also the YES movement voted for it at the time.

And it was the YES and CSSD movements that have now changed their minds and will support the Senate version of the law, ie without mandatory quotas, but with passages banning double food quality, ie the sale of products that have the same packaging but a different composition within the EU.

During a pandemic, someone is regularly quarantined and we are probably not able to secure those 101 votes. And in such a case, because the Senate version is voted for first, we will vote for the Senate version specified the Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Radek Vondráček (YES).

Jan Hamáček, Deputy Prime Minister and head of the CSSD said, we have agreed that if the Senate does what is expected, we will support the Senate version.

The head of the deputies of the SPD opposition movement, Radim Fiala, thinks that it is a great pity. Producers, mainly from the West will push us out of their own market and will be paid for by both the Czech consumer, the Czech farmer and the Czech landscape," he concluded. MEPs should discuss the amendment to the Food Act again in April.