Brussels, 14/12/2015 (Agence Europe) - EU agriculture ministers, meeting in Brussels on Monday 14 December, gave majority support to the trialogue agreement reached four days earlier among the institutions on the proposal for the programme for the distribution of fruit and vegetables and milk in schools (see EUROPE 11451). France was the country most critical of the result.
Luxembourg minister Fernand Etgen said that the Council had taken note of information provided by the Presidency of the Council on the outcome of negotiations with the European Parliament and spoke of the largely positive response from most delegations to the text. The Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) will meet on Wednesday 16 December to evaluate this result and finalise the text of the regulation on the school milk and fruit-vegetables programmes, Etgen said. The individual national envelopes will be made known on Tuesday 15 December, a number of sources said. The total annual budget is €250 million (€100 million for milk and €150 million for fruit and vegetables). Several ministers, including those of Hungary, France and Cyprus, asked on Monday to be told of the sums that will be available to them before they came to a final decision on the compromise reached.
“An agreement has been reached”, welcomed Agriculture Commissioner Phil Hogan, acknowledging the difficulties in the milk sector, which will be able to count on a €100 million envelope under the distribution scheme in schools.
German minister Christian Schmidt backed the compromise reached. Belgium was critical that the funding relates only to the “milk” part of the product distributed. Spanish minister Isabel Garcia Tejerina regretted that dried fruits and table olives were not among the eligible products and, with regard to the criteria for funding allocation, would have preferred historic references to be a lesser criterion (compared with the other criteria of the economy of the region and the number of pupils benefitting from the scheme). Lithuania criticised Parliament's demands on the legal basis (significant concessions were made to Parliament in the last trialogue). Sweden and Finland stressed the importance of past record as a criterion for the allocation of milk scheme funding.
Italian minister Giuseppe Castiglione broadly supported the text (addition of fresh fruit and cheeses), apart from using historic references for the milk scheme. Italy argues that account should be taken of the number of recipients (pupils) since there are new needs.
France was unhappy at the lack of prior consultation (i.e. before concluding the compromise) of the member states and noted that all of Parliament's demands on the legal basis had been conceded. Article 43(2) (ordinary legislative procedure) is to be the legal basis on a number of important provisions (budget, criteria and transfer of funding between programmes). In terms of eligible products, France hopes to be able to continue to organise the distribution of processed products and that no Commission delegated act will be able to challenge this.
Cyprus deeply regretted that chocolate milk was not one of the eligible products and asked for an increase in the funding it is to receive. It also asked to be considered an outermost region of the EU. The Netherlands restated its opposition to EU funds being used for initiatives of this type, which could be done nationally (subsidiarity).
The regulation in question (merging the two programmes and simplifying the rules) will come into force from August 2017. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)