This is the best summary I could come up with:

“Obviously, the aim in stigmatizing these products is to be able to tell manufacturers to rethink their pricing policy,” Stefen Bompais, director of client communications at Carrefour, said in an interview.

Carrefour CEO Alexandre Bompard, who also heads French retail industry lobby group FDC, has repeatedly said consumer goods companies are not cooperating in efforts to cut the price of thousands of staples despite a fall in the cost of raw materials.

In this he is backed by French finance minister Bruno Le Maire, who in June summoned 75 big retailers and consumer groups to his ministry urging them to cut prices.

“Lindt & Sprüngli increased its prices groupwide on average by 9.3% in line with local cost structures,” a company spokesperson told Reuters.

France, like other European countries, has been trying for months to ease consumer pain in the face of a surge in the cost of living, strong-arming big business to freeze or cut food and transport prices — with mixed results.

Le Maire said last month that consumer goods companies and retailers had agreed to bring forward annual price negotiations — which would normally have taken place next year — to September.

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