Brussels, 11/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The informal meeting of European agriculture ministers in Luxembourg on Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 September will be devoted to the continuation of discussions on measures to help farmers who find themselves in dire straits as a result, inter alia, of the Russian embargo and falling prices, particularly in the dairy and pigmeat sectors.
Monday 14 September will be given over to visits to farms in the north of Luxembourg. The following day, ministers will exchange views on developments on the agricultural markets. They will continue discussion of the package of measures presented by the European Commission on 7 September and debated for the first time in the Agriculture Council that same day (see EUROPE 11384). To address the difficulties in the livestock sector, the Commission presented a €500 million raft of measures.
A Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) meeting was held on Friday 11 September to prepare for the ministers' meeting. The Commission has submitted to the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of Ministers papers detailing some points of the proposal (budget issues, private storage measures, promotion, early payment of direct aid and rural development payments). Consideration of these papers will continue at the SCA meeting in Luxembourg on Monday on the sidelines of the informal Council.
Budget. At the SCA meeting, several countries, including France, Portugal and Estonia, welcomed the fact that the crisis reserve had been left untouched (and thus, no need for financial discipline). Several countries, including Romania, Poland, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, however, felt that, given the scale of the crisis, the financial provision was inadequate. A number of countries of a more liberal persuasion, such as the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom, were of the opinion, on the contrary, that the package was perfectly adequate. Some countries regretted that no figures had been provided by the Commission on: - how much of the package would be given to targeted aid (€400 million, according to forecasts) and what will be used for storage; - how much each country will receive and the formula to be used for allocating the targeted aid (many countries made this point, including Germany, the Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Bulgaria, Romania and Finland). Germany, the Netherlands and Poland said that the targeted measures (which will focus essentially on the dairy sector, according to the Commission) should extend to pigmeat.
The criteria for sharing out the money should take a number of factors into account, argued the delegations to the SCA: - quotas (according to the UK, Slovakia, Italy, et al), prices (Romania, Croatia and others), production costs (Finland and Greece along with others), the level of production per country (France, Spain, Poland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Croatia, et al), milk delivery (Germany), a drought criterion (Poland), less-favoured areas (Austria and Slovenia), the number of small producers (Austria and Malta), account to be taken of ewe's milk (Italy, Greece and Bulgaria).
Some countries (France, Italy and Finland mainly) called for the possibility of using state aid with amendment of the de minimis rule. For the liberal countries (Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands), national aid that would distort the market must be avoided.
Private storage and intervention. The private storage measures for milk and pigmeat were welcomed by Ireland and Finland. Germany, on the other hand, took the view that storage measures for pigmeat would do nothing to improve the situation. France, Hungary and the Czech Republic called for an increase in the intervention price for milk rather than having private storage aid. France and Italy argued that the list of pork products eligible for private storage should be extended. Questions were asked (by Spain, Poland, Denmark and Hungary) about the quantities of cheese by country that could be put to private storage. Cheeses cannot all be treated the same way (maturing during storage increases the value), Italy pointed out.
Direct aid. Some countries, such as Poland and Hungary, called for the percentage of direct aid that can be paid early to be increased. They called for the same level was that proposed by the Commission for rural development - 85%. The Commission has proposed that member states should be allowed to pay 70% (up from 50%) of direct aid early, from 16 October. It has also proposed an increase from 75% to 85% for the early payment of rural development aid linked to land or animals (agri-environment, organic production, areas subject to natural constraints and animal welfare), from 16 October.
Several countries, including Portugal, Romania, Finland, Poland, Germany, Croatia, Denmark and the Netherlands, called for the checks prior to the granting of this aid to be relaxed so that the measure might have the desired effect. France argued that, in light of the urgency of the crisis, the proposed promotion measures (increase in funding for 2016) would take too long to be put into effect. (Lionel Changeur)