TF1’s 1 p.m. compared the prices of a certain number of products in France and Germany.
The differences are obvious, and confirmed by border residents.
How to explain them? Elements of response.
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Taxes, fuel, inflation… The French face the (very) high cost of living
The 1 p.m. team went shopping in a hard-discount store. A major brand shampoo costs 6.49 euros. Twenty kilometers further, in a store of the same brand, this product is sold for 5.95 euros, or 54 cents less. Same brand, same distributor, only one difference: the country. The first is sold in France, near Strasbourg, the other in Germany.
And this is not the only difference in price, testify cross-border workers at the microphone of TF1. “On meat, there is a difference, on fruits and vegetables, there is no picture”says a lady. Products may be more expensive in France or Germany, depending on the case. Their price is often negotiated by large supermarkets at the European level. They unite in large purchasing centers to have greater influence over manufacturers, and to guarantee more homogeneous prices between countries.
Closer negotiations
Why then do we find price differences? We interviewed the representative of a distributor present in France and other European countries. “Prices in Germany or other countries in Europe are much more representative of the fair price, compared to a raw material which fluctuates on food products”explains Michel Biero, vice-president of Lidl. In France, in fact, the prices of supermarket brands are negotiated once a year with manufacturers. Whereas elsewhere in Europe, these negotiations can take place several times a year, which explains why prices adapt more closely to changes in the price of raw materials.
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But this is not the only reason, it must be added “all the taxes that exist upstream, which we call production taxes, or the cost of labor, which will make it more expensive to work in France than to work in Germany”estimates consumer expert Philippe Goetzmann.
And certain taxes exist here and nowhere else. For example, the one on the “end of life of packaging”. For a French chocolatier met by our team, this represents a few cents per pack, but at the end of the year it is “between 2000 and 3000 additional euros, in terms of packaging purchases”. Professionals must also deal with VAT discrepancies. Milk chocolate, for example, is taxed at 20% in France, three times more than in Germany.
