Ms Henrieta Jany-Roskova:

No. The guidelines explain an exclusion. The agreements are voluntary. The guidelines are binding on the Commission, so if the Commission were to receive, for example, a complaint from a competitor, if there were such an agreement in place, the Commission would assess the complaint on the basis of the guidelines. Also, if the Commission were to assess a request for an opinion on a given agreement, the Commission would be bound by those guidelines. Those guidelines have been requested by the European co-legislators, by the European Parliament, when this new exclusion has been introduced. The reason behind that was that it is a new exclusion and farmers and other operators need explanations as to how to apply it to have some sort of guide to how the agreements can be designed in order to comply with this. This is purely voluntary, however, and that is why I would call it a market-based approach by the market participants.