Central Europe resents double EU food standard

Emmet Livingstone , 

Simon Marks 

EU’s new guard wants to close East-West divide in food ingredients.

Radek Mica/AFP via Getty Images

Central European countries want big food companies and supermarkets to stop selling sub-par versions of popular brands such as Sprite and Iglo fish sticks in former communist states.

So-called “dual-quality foods” have been on Central European governments’ radar for years, but Slovakia’s presidency of the Council of the European Union has raised their hopes that Bratislava will finally push to combat double standards by launching action toward tighter regulation at the European level. The Slovaks, vocally supported by the Czechs, want to rectify what they see as an unfair distortion of the single market.

Researchers have found packaged foods may look the same in Germany and the Czech Republic, but aren’t the same on the inside — the version in Prague is often of an inferior quality. The practice, advocates say, reflects a belief among suppliers that they can still palm off poorer quality goods to Central European consumers more than a quarter of a century after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The food industry says differences in some products’ ingredients are simply due to the peculiarities of national tastes across the EU.

“We’re not [saying] companies cannot adjust their products to consumer demands,” said Olga Sehnalová, a Czech Member of the European Parliament. “We are talking about different quality when it comes to the composition of the basic ingredient. I think that this is unacceptable.”

With just two months left of the Slovak presidency however, the dispute is unlikely to muster the support required from big member countries to push it onto the agenda.

Breaking the two-tier system and forcing companies to sell identical branded products across the bloc would require the EU to revise its food legislation — a prospect relished by neither the food industry nor the European Commission. A Czech official said their push was receiving quiet support but only from less powerful countries such as Bulgaria, Croatia and Estonia, which are conducting their own studies.

A Commission official declined to comment on whether Brussels is examining the issue but pointed out current rules require food products to list every ingredient, which fully informs consumers.

“As long as products comply with EU legal requirements and do not mislead consumers as to their main characteristics, no legislation prevents companies from differentiating products according to markets, in line with the taste, preferences or purchasing power of consumers,” the official added.

Just not the same

A 2015 study by Prague’s University of Chemistry and Technology examined ingredients in brand-name products in German and Czech supermarkets and found some had markedly different ingredients.

A 1-liter bottle of Sprite in German supermarkets was sweetened only with sugar, for example. The same bottle in Czech supermarkets was sweetened with fructose and glucose syrup, as well as artificial sweeteners aspartame and acesulfame. The Czech Sprite was also slightly more expensive.

The Slovak and Czech governments see this as unfair: Their consumers are in some cases offered pricier but lower-quality food than that in their rich Western neighboring countries.

“The truth is if you ask people in Central and Eastern Europe about this — they mind it,” Sehnalová said, adding that many saw it as a “matter of discrimination.”

Researchers found that the same packet of Iglo fish sticks in the Czech Republic contained 7 percent less fish than its identical German counterpart. Iglo had no comment. And researchers found that in Nestea lemon, a brand of flavored iced tea co-owned by Nestlé and Coca-Cola, the Czech version had more artificial sweeteners and about 40 percent less tea extract than a German version.

“We use consumer insights to help us improve products and develop new recipes that respond to the specific expectations of the local customers,” Nestlé spokeswoman Olivera Međugorac said.

Coca-Cola, which manufactures Sprite, responded to the study by saying that the equation of artificial sweeteners with low quality was “simplistic and utilitarian.” It added that local manufacturers, guided by local tastes, decided whether to use artificial sweeteners and that the Czech makeup of Sprite was similar to that used in Spain and the United States. Coca-Cola also pointed out that the different ingredients in Czech Nestea meant that its sugar content was 35 percent lower than the German version.

Florence Ranson, a spokesperson for Brussels lobby FoodDrinkEurope, said another reason for ingredient differences is the fact that some products are made in different factories, which each have separate production processes. She added that companies are “assessing” the perception that Eastern European markets have lower quality ingredients.

The Czech Republic first raised the issue at a May meeting of EU agriculture ministers, pushing countries and the European Commission to find “legislative measures” to prevent companies using different ingredients in different markets.

They also sent a letter and research evidence to European Commissioner for Health and Food Safety Vytenis Andriukaitis, Commissioner for the Internal Market Elżbieta Bieńkowska and Commissioner for Justice Věra Jourová in an effort to get the Commission to consider the issue. They have yet to respond.

“We have no evidence that dual quality causes health problems,” a Czech official said, explaining that the government opposed the commercial practice because it thought consumers were being misled.

Elena Višnar Malinovská, a spokeswoman for the Slovak permanent representation to the European Union, said that the next steps are still being considered but the possibility of Slovakia pushing the issue further was “not excluded.”

Store brand discrepancies

Current EU food legislation requires companies to fully label ingredients to inform consumers, but it doesn’t require that brand-name products are tied to specific recipes. Czech officials confirmed there was no way to address the differences in product of the same brand without drafting new parts of EU food law.

That would require years of tortuous negotiations.

And those aren’t the only products that need to be addressed: Store brands sold by supermarket chains are an issue, too.

Studies carried out in recent months show that products from big brands such as Ferrero, Nestlé or Danone show the differences in ingredients are “rather insignificant,” said Markéta Barošová Lajdová, who works for the Czech consumer agency dTest. “On the other hand, goods produced for supermarket chains under their own private brands differ in ingredients more.”

“The ‘Czech version,'” she said, “tends to be of lower quality.”

The results of one study released in June involved tests on a powdered Nesquik chocolate drink, Danone strawberry yogurt, Nestea lemon ice tea, Milka chocolate biscuits and Nutella chocolate spread. Lab tests found no significant discrepancies between products sold in Austria and the Czech Republic.

But when dTest conducted studies on branded products from the German supermarket Kaufland, results showed that K-Classic toasted bread had 59 percent whole grain flour content in Germany and only 19 percent in the Czech Republic. Other examples included K-Classic paprika chips, where the product in Germany contained 34 percent sunflower oil content, while the Czech equivalent was produced using 14 percent sunflower oil and 21 percent palm oil. There was also more fat and less pork in own–brand sausages in the Czech Republic compared to the same meat sold in Germany.

Kaufland said that the “vast majority” of its products were composed of the same ingredients but that in some cases differences might appear due to the supermarket’s use of various suppliers across Europe.

“The products of our own brand K-Classic meet high quality standards, which are regularly checked by us,” a spokesperson for the supermarket chain said.

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