Samenvatting

On April 30, 2019, the European Directive (2019/633) on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain entered into force. The directive was the result of debates on a fairer supply chain that could be traced back for at least a decade. The main actors in this debate, the European Commission, FoodDrinkEurope, EuroCommerce, and Copa-Cogeca each had their own narrative of the truth – a frame they used to highlight certain aspects of the story in a way that was beneficial to their own position.

This dissertation takes a closer look at framing to address the following question: “To what extent can we speak of frame congruence between the lobbying process and the Directive on unfair trading practices in business-to-business relationships in the agricultural and food supply chain?” To make this study more feasible, the scope of the research has been limited to the period between January 1, 2017, and April 30, 2019. In 2017, the debate intensified and a public consultation process was launched.

As the central research question suggests, this dissertation makes use of a case study method, accompanied by a frame analysis on 63 documents published by the main actors within the researched timeframe. Although frame congruence does not entail a causal relationship, the main findings of this research do suggest that there are a few frames from the lobbying process that seem to have been supported in the final text of the directive.