Brussels, 24/09/2015 (Agence Europe) - The draft text of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council on the proposal revising the programmes for the distribution of fruit, vegetables and milk in schools was well received by the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) on Monday 21 September.
As part of the measures to address the crisis affecting the livestock sector, the Agriculture Council pledged to come to agreement speedily on this food distribution scheme in schools.
The text drafted by the Luxembourg Presidency and put to the EU agriculture experts takes Article 43.3 (Council competence) as the proper legal basis. The legal basis for several points in the proposal have thus been shifted from Article 43.2 (Council-Parliament competence) as provided for in the text on the common market organisation (Regulation 1306/13) to Article 43.3 TFEU under Regulation 1370/2013 which determines measures on fixing certain aids and refunds. This could, ultimately, lead to interinstitutional deadlock with Parliament.
The Presidency also proposes increasing the scheme's milk budget (which would rise from €80 million to €100 million). This increase is in line with the Parliament opinion on the issue and must also be seen against a background of crisis.
Virtually all the delegations agreed with the legal architecture of the Presidency's proposal. The idea of increasing the milk budget in the schools distribution scheme was backed by most countries, including Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Spain. Some countries, among them the Netherlands and France, called for clarification on where the money to increase the milk budget would come from. Other, so called liberal countries, like the United Kingdom and Sweden, opposed the milk budget increase.
Some delegations reiterated their positions on certain aspects of the proposal (on which technical discussion is still continuing): 1) criteria for the allocation of funding (particularly for milk) - those in favour of historic criteria: Portugal, Finland, France, Poland, Sweden and Denmark, in particular; those in favour of criteria that reflect the numbers of children: Ireland, the Czech Republic, Spain, Greece, Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia et al; 2) possibilities of transferring funding from one scheme to another (for the moment, transfer of up to 20% is possible) - happy with 20%: Ireland, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Belgium; for 30% or more: France, Germany, Portugal and Finland; 3) allowing funding that is not used by some countries to be reallocated to others: a request for this to be made possible was made by Romania, Greece, Hungary, Croatia, the Netherlands and France; 4) extending the list of eligible products - supporting extending the scope to include dairy products and processed fruit products: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Austria, Spain and Poland.
Future work. The Commission noted during the SCA meeting that a delegated act for the targeted aid (€420 million out of the total of €500 million for EU farmers experiencing severe difficulty in the milk and pigmeat sectors) should be published in the Official Journal of the EU before 15 October. A delegated act on the new private storage system for cheeses, including a mechanism for reallocating unused funding, is being prepared.
The SCA meeting on 28 September will discuss the delegated act on extending the public intervention period for powdered milk and butter and on progress on intervention in 2016 for the same products. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)