Yes, in this very case, it means French customers don’t profit from the benefits of a free market (i.e. a competitive price) because the price was fixed. The p

Yes, in this very case, it means French customers don’t profit from the benefits of a free market (i.e. a competitive price) because the price was fixed. The problem here is that all customers that would buy a product for amount X, but don’t buy it at Y (the fixed price, which is greater than X), won’t buy it just because of the fixed price. Which effectively cuts those customers off from the product. The French obviously want to maximize their consumers‘ access to such products.