Brussels, 20/06/2013 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 20 June, the European Commission urged Italy to take action to address shortcomings in the recovery of surplus levies due from dairy producers who exceeded their individual quotas in years when Italy overran its national dairy quota.
Despite repeated and numerous requests from the Commission, the majority of levies due between 1995 and 2009 has still not been recovered by the Italian authorities, who have manifestly not taken the appropriate measures to effectively recover the total estimated amount of at least €1.42 billion from producers. The Commission has underlined that this amount must be reimbursed to the Italian budget so that the Italian taxpayers do not lose out.
“The failure to ensure the effective recovery of these levies undermines the efforts undertaken at European level to stabilise the market of dairy products. In addition, it creates distortions of competition with other European and Italian producers who respected the production quotas or paid the surplus levies in case of overrun”, the Commission explains.
The request made by the Commission today takes the form of a letter of formal notice, the first stage in infringement proceedings. Italy has two months in which to make its observations known. After hearing those observations, the Commission may call on Italy to take measures in order to ensure compliance with the quota regime during a given period (“reasoned opinion”). (LC/transl.jl)