EU supports online store that sells local products

The European Parliament Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development is supporting a Dutch project that wants to highlight local products from all over Europe. The pilot project will launch in the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France and French Guiana. The multilingual web shop is called More for Local and offers typical local products.

The proposal for the project was done by MEP Annie Schreijer-Pierik from the Christian Democratic Appeal, who loves local products from Twente, a non-administrative region in the eastern part of the Netherlands. Last Thursday the European Parliament approved the proposal and announced it will support this plan by granting them 398.000 euros, Twinkle Magazine writes.

Online store ‘More for Local’
More for Local is an initiative from entrepreneur Nico Bebseler, who’s also the owner of a online organic grocery store in Twente. Thanks to the money from the European Parliament Bebseler is now able to continue developing More for Local. He thinks the website will launch at the end of this year. “It will be a facilitating platform. We take care of the financial flows and logistics. That’s something we can’t let the small producers do”, he says. “We offer them an extra sales channel outside of the region, because all European consumers should be able to order products from this website.”

According to Schreijer-Pierk the project could both benefit local retailers and consumers. Local producers of let’s say special cheeses or particular kinds of bread can now sell their products across all of Europe. And of course, consumer can also profit from this as they now are able to buy local products online, so they don’t need to get to that particular region to get something they like.