2023-05-11 04:30:06
When he was Minister of Agriculture (2020-2022), Julien Denormandie sent the prospectuses of the E. Leclerc centers to Michel-Edouard Leclerc every week for several months. Circled in red were the prices per kilo of pork or tomatoes. The politician added his comment: “Not expensive enough”.
Julien Denormandie is part of a cohort of political, union and professional leaders who are intolerant of the distribution giant’s practices. And who denounce at will, in Michel-Edouard Leclerc, a “double talk”a “demagoguery”or even a “populism”. A former minister assures him: “I quickly understood that I was dealing with a seller of magic ointment. »
In January 2022, when the price of the baguette was frozen at 29 euro cents in E. Leclerc stores, chef Thierry Marx also got carried away in a gallery in Release : “By lowering the price of the baguette (…), when raw materials go up in flames, an entire sector is being murdered. » The accusation is always the same: by claiming to defend low prices and purchasing power, Michel-Edouard Leclerc would jeopardize whole sections of the economy.
In a book published by Plon, Investigation of Michel-Edouard LeclercMagali Picard, journalist at LSA, a magazine specializing in household consumption, looked at the career, the fights, and the apparent ambivalences of this boss who is so mediatised, ” friendly “ et “manipulator”. It thus offers a dive behind the scenes of the E. Leclerc establishments, which makes it possible to better understand why the man is both under constant fire from the critics of his opponents, and presented as “the favorite boss of the French”.
Multiple trials
His crusades once morest monopolies and regulated prices illustrate this well. For example, it will oppose head-on the lobby of pharmacists in the 1980s by gradually imposing itself as a seller of parapharmacy products, until then the preserve of pharmacies. The lawsuits will be multiple. But he will be able to prevail, taking public opinion to witness, denouncing “pharmacists’ margins, as well as agreements with laboratories”recalls the author.
In the name of the defense of purchasing power, Michel-Edouard Leclerc stages his insubordination, protests once morest unfair regulations in these eyes. Quit breaking the law. In the early 1980s, he protested once morest the establishment of a single book price. His sign “practices two prices recognizable by their labels affixed to the books: the Leclerc price in orange – obviously the cheapest – and the Lang price [correspondant à la loi] a rose ». There once more, the lawsuits will rain. But this time, Michel-Edouard Leclerc will not win.
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