Brussels, 08/12/2011 (Agence Europe) - French Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire, speaking on Wednesday 7 December, welcomed the agreement reached by the Community on the dairy mini-package (contractual relations, see EUROPE 10510).
“Thanks to the determination shown by France”, the provisions of the dairy package: - enshrine in Community law the option for member states to make it compulsory to have contracts and to set a minimum length of contract; - acknowledge the important role played by joint-trade organisations; - allow operators (joint-trade organisations, producers' organisations, etc) to control the quantities of protected designation of origin (PDO) and protected geographical origin (PGI) cheeses; - strengthen producers' collective bargaining power.
The provisions consolidate the instruments that have been put in place. Le Maire welcomed the change made to European competition law that will allow producers, within non-commercial producers' organisations representing up to 3.5% of EU milk production and one third of national production, collectively to negotiate prices. “This strengthening of the position of producers will help bring balanced contracts between milk producers and their buyers”, France says.
The European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) does not share this view. It is of the opinion that the agreement “fails to put in place in the EU instruments that will bring European producers stable prices that cover production costs, including labour”. It says, however, that the easing of competition rules to allow milk prices to be negotiated is a positive move. ECVC says that “once again the EU has allowed the industry to keep the power to impose its conditions. It is surprising to see the restrictions on the scale of producers' organisations when, on the other side of the table, there are major groups, such as Lactilis or large multinational cooperatives, which can impose their prices and condition in various countries”. Via Campesina says that the system of contracts agreed upon “serves the dairy industry since it does not require the industry to build into the contracts prices that include production costs and provide producers with fair remuneration”. Furthermore, it is unacceptable, ECVC says, to leave cooperatives outside the contractual relations mechanisms when, in many European countries they process most of the milk (in Belgium, it is over 90%) and impose conditions on producers every bit as tough as industry. “Amalgamating the interests of producers and cooperatives, as Copa-Cogeca does, is a very poor way of defending producers”, the ECVC states. It advocates a system of “public control of production which can adapt supply to demand” as a way of addressing price volatility, and calls on the Commission to conduct a study on the impact of ending milk quotas in 2015.
Copa-Cogeca feels that the agreement improving contractual relations between farmers and processors is “a step in the right direction”. It will help improve the positioning of farmers in the food chain and enable them to get a better return from the market, Copa-Cogeca says. (LC/transl.rt)