The head of the USR senators, Ştefan Pălărie, announced, on Monday, that the USR is calling the Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, to the plenary session of the Senate, at Government Time, whom he accuses of plagiarizing a draft law of the AUR regarding the capping of own-brand supermarket products.
“We want to understand if, when his lordship decided to plagiarize a bill from those from the AUR, what a strange coincidence, as if he were in a form of coalition or collaboration, and to propose an unparalleled mischief, namely the capping of own-brand supermarket products, in a mechanism that would have clear interference in one of the largest product markets, not only in Romania, but also in Europe, the question is whether his lordship had an official point of view of the Government or the Consumer Protection Agency”, declared Ştefan Pălărie, the leader of USR senators, at the Parliament.
Regarding the USR ministers called by the PSD in Parliament, Ștefan Pălărie claimed that “it seems strange to target all the USR ministers”.
The proposal made by Minister Florin Barbu
The Minister of Agriculture, Florin Barbu, proposed to the European Commission that the big stores’ own brands should not represent more than 20% of the total products on the shelf, in order not to discourage local products.
The measure also appears in a bill submitted by AUR MPs in October 2025.
According to Digi24, the minister denies that he copied another project and claims that the measure is a beneficial one. “We see in the retail store that the liter of own-brand milk is 5 lei, and the Romanian brand is 10 lei. This means that the commercial mark-up for the Romanian brand is very high. If you read carefully my statements and my requests to amend Directive 633 on unfair commercial practices, you can see that I asked that, for each product category, the commercial mark-up be the same. As long as an own-brand product is sold for 5 lei, and the manufacturer’s price is 10 lei, I don’t think it’s a good and healthy thing”said the minister.
