Governance della filiera tra intervento pubblico e autonomia privata

This volume deals with the complex issue of the agri-food chain, which is a formula for synthesis around which the doctrinal and ideological debate has developed on the process of integrating legal relations that is established from agricultural production to its placing on the market. The extent of the field of investigation, its limits and boundaries affect areas of relevance that affect related sectors with still ambiguous and undefined contours (agrobusiness, agri-food and agro-industrial). The characteristics of the agri-food industry, its differences from agro-industrial, its discipline are always disputed; and even now the legislation and authoritative and distinguished scholars deny the existence of an autonomous agri-food system, seeing only a phenomenon of agrobusiness composed of agri-food and agro-industrial. The aim of Chapter I is to define the field of investigation of the supply chain and agri-food products in the context of the competition-oriented agricultural market, capable of looking at the production aspect within a broader framework designed by the CAP and the new rules of sustainable development. Reading these events does indeed introduce a precious observation perspective because it allows on the one hand to reveal the tightness of the system and, on the other, to reveal the resistance of the network of woven relationships: the needs of producers, the organization of the agri-food market and its protection needs. As will be seen, the conditions of existence and feasibility of the sector must necessarily be measured in practice within a regulatory framework which, in turn, must be uniform and coherent. Chapter III investigates who the real protagonists of the agri-food chain are, analyzing the specificity of the fruit and vegetable sector which, following a careful analysis carried out by the Competition Authority in the distribution sector, highlights the major critical issues of the agri-food chain and from one perspective offers a solution aimed at consolidating the associative structures of the agricultural part according to both an overall improvement in the agricultural sector, but also a strengthening of production activity itself. Chapter IV explores the particular colouring of the individual negotiating and contractual situation, when it takes place within a vertical and horizontal context of integration. The contractual relationship is a model that from the bottom up entrusts negotiating autonomy with a function of market regulation. The rules of the agricultural market, which are traditionally set apart from the terms of competition law regarding supremacy or tendency to indifference (Article 42 TFEU), now seem to view competitive rules more favourably and of interest as possible remedies to bankruptcies attributable to the way in which it operates. This tension, as we shall see, is reflected in the negotiating process and in the regulatory models used and utilised to regulate trade in agricultural products. The (re)actions at critical moments in the fresh milk sector and the negotiating relations in the field of PDO products, are all regulatory indices that express possible virtuous examples of negotiating regulation within a market open to competition. Finally, Chapter V aims to examine European regulatory interventions in order to grasp the primary role that agriculture as a whole is called upon to play in the general framework of sustainable development and to reflect on the change in the paradigm that pushes towards the construction of a new model for regulating relations in the agri-food sector.