Brussels, 01/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - Member state members meeting at the management committee on Thursday 28 January, voted unanimously in favour of a European Commission proposal to extend the private storage aid mechanism for skimmed milk powder and butter until 30 September 2016.
The milk powder programme (stands at 36 cents/day/tonne for a 9-12 month period) was launched in September to help the sector meet falling prices and the European Commission hoped for the withdrawal of 100,000 t from the European market. In 2015, only 52,000 t was stored, with around 4,200 t being added since beginning of January.
The management committee approved, despite the vote against by 10 member states, a Commission project to put an end to the private storage aid regime for pork meat. The mechanism effectively reached its objective with around 90,000 t (4.5% of monthly production in the EU) temporarily withdrawn from the market. The Commission asserts that prices have stabilised since the beginning of the year and judges that the volume stored is now at risk of destabilising the market in five months time when storage is reversed. This system was part of an emergency measure for the animal rearing sector and was launched last September and opened on 4 January. More than three quarters of all volume have been stored by four countries: Germany, Spain, Denmark and the Netherlands. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)