Brussels, 06/06/2011 (Agence Europe) - An extraordinary session of the Council of agriculture ministers of the member states of the European Union is being held in Luxembourg this Tuesday 7 June, under the chairmanship of the Hungarian minister, Sándor Fazekas, to discuss the implications of the E. coli outbreak on the mechanism for the sanitary safety of food and the markets. The Council will start at around 2.00pm and the Hungarian Presidency plans to hold a press conference when the work finishes, at around 5.30pm.
This is good news for the producers of vegetables affected by the impact of the outbreak of the deadly bacterium, which started in Germany: the European Commission announced on Monday 6 June that it intends to offer financial “compensation” to help producers of fruit and vegetables whose sales have plummeted due to a drop in consumption. Several countries are calling for aid, among them Spain, the victim of a crisis of mistrust over its cucumbers (initially blamed for the outbreak by the German authorities), but also France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. At this stage, the Commission cannot give any idea of the level of this aid. An EU management committee will be held on Tuesday afternoon to give a more precise overview of the economic impact of the crisis.
“The idea is to come up with something on Tuesday which we can discuss among ministers and it will cover not only producers which are members of producer organisations but also fruit and vegetable producers who are not members of producer organisations”, said Roger Waite, spokesperson to Dacian Cioloº, the European commissioner for agriculture. “We need a European solution”, the spokesperson added, as the crisis has impacted upon several European countries.
In theory, only producers who are members of an organisation are entitled to receive exceptional aid, to a level of between 5% and 10% of the annual value of their production. Such producers represent on average 35% of the profession in the EU. The others work independently.
Second option: The EU can also authorise the various European governments to pay national public aid to the producers in question (therefore outside the EU budget), limited to €7,500 per holding over three years (de minimis aid).
The losses announced by the various countries stand at several tens of millions of euros to date. The EU is believed to be looking into ways of accessing additional funding from its budget to top up the envelope.
France wants decisive measures. Bruno le Maire, the French minister for agriculture, has made a number of requests of the European agriculture commissioner, whom he met in Brussels on Monday 6 June. This crisis has had an enormous impact on French fruit and vegetable producers. The consumption of a number of vegetables (cucumber, lettuce, tomato) has collapsed, says Bruno le Maire. He called on Cioloº for compensation “to the nearest euro” of the losses suffered by French vegetable producers. These “very considerable” losses have been assessed at several million euros since the beginning of the sanitary crisis for producers of fruit and vegetables in his country. These producers must be able to count on the exceptional support of the EU. The money should come from the budget of the EU, said Le Maire. He told the commissioner that “we need a gesture as soon as possible”. He hopes that at this Tuesday's meeting of the extraordinary Agriculture Council, Cioloº will be able to say “that he is prepared to financially support all producers of fruit and vegetables who have been affected by this crisis”. All producers, which means “the producer organisations (well-structured producers) and smaller producers (especially of lettuces, cucumbers and tomatoes), who are the first to suffer the worst effects of the downturn in consumption, prices and their income”, said the French agriculture minister. He called for “swift and substantial measures for French producers of fruit and vegetables”.
Early warning system under fire. “There has been a serious malfunction of the sanitary safety mechanism on food in Europe. This means that we must learn from this. We must reinforce traceability along the entire chain”, said Bruno le Maire. France will make proposals to this effect at Tuesday's Agriculture Council. In the view of le Maire, “something has failed in our prevention and early warning system”. Spain has also asked for a revision of the food warning system of the European Union and awaits explanations from the German authorities over their management of the affair.
Drought. European farmers from several countries, particularly France, have been faced with the problem of drought. The Commission appears to be ruling out European aid in the immediate future. “We are not at this stage convinced that this will reach European level” and therefore justify EU intervention, said Roger Waite. Bruno le Maire has asked Cioloº for “aid from the European Union, particularly for stock breeders”. First of all to authorise France to make national aid available, in line with European law. Le Maire also called on Cioloº to monitor bovine meat prices, to avoid a collapse of prices on this market. (L.C./transl.fl)