A coalition of eight European Union Member States has called on the European Commission to accelerate efforts to eliminate unjustified territorial supply constraints (TSCs), warning that such practices undermine the integrity of the Single Market and impose significant costs on consumers.
Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Croatia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Slovenia submitted a joint non-paper ahead of today’s Competitiveness Council meeting, urging the Commission to deliver concrete proposals well before its planned timeline of late 2026.
Territorial supply constraints occur when multinational suppliers restrict wholesalers and retailers from purchasing goods across borders, effectively segmenting markets along national lines. According to the signatories, these practices inflate consumer prices, particularly in smaller and mid-sized Member States, reduce competitive pressures and distort the principles of Europe’s internal market. While some price differences across Member States can be explained by logistics costs, legal requirements or consumer preferences, the coalition stressed that many disparities instead reflect deliberate strategies to maximise supplier profits.
The Commission itself has estimated that unjustified territorial supply constraints cost EU consumers more than €14 billion annually, with disproportionate burdens falling on smaller markets where retailers have limited bargaining power. The eight Member States warned that recent inflationary pressures have exacerbated the negative effects of such practices. “Citizens across the Union, especially in smaller Member States, are directly confronted with excessive prices caused by unjustified TSCs,” the non-paper states. “Political credibility demands that the EU act sooner and more decisively.”
The governments argued that persistently high consumer prices, rising inflationary pressures and the erosion of trust in the Single Market are the inevitable results of continued inaction. They urged the Commission to make the fight against territorial supply constraints a top policy priority, insisting that concrete measures be presented well before the end of 2026. They further called for an EU-wide register of territorial supply constraint examples, a faster and more decisive enforcement of competition law, closer cooperation between the Commission and national competition authorities within the European Competition Network, and legal clarification to ensure that such practices are explicitly recognised as unlawful under EU law. The evaluation of Regulation 1/2003, they suggested, should be used to identify loopholes and bottlenecks, while greater attention should also be paid to whether the definition of market power could be extended to cover territorial supply constraints at Union level.
The signatories also pressed the Commission to address additional barriers that may contribute to territorial supply constraints, including national labelling requirements and rules that can be misused to keep markets segmented. They further suggested that, where competition law proves insufficient, new legislative measures should be considered, including the possibility of addressing harmful supply restrictions within the ongoing revision of the Unfair Trading Practices Directive.
Framing the issue as a core test of European integration, the Member States warned that the Single Market cannot be a success if dominant multinational suppliers are allowed to partition it for profit. The Commission has already launched investigations and fact-finding exercises into territorial supply constraints, but pressure is now mounting for more urgent legislative and enforcement action.
