Brussels, 12/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - In a letter to the Dutch Presidency of the Council of the EU, the European Coordination Via Campesina (ECVC) calls for “the creation and implementation of public tools for regulating the dairy market”.
ECVC also advocates a system of production control. The aim of these measures would be to ensure fair milk prices for producers - that is to say, one that covers production costs.
“We cannot accept that the adjustment of the European dairy market be done at the expense of thousands of farms in Europe”, states the letter which calls on the Agriculture Council of Monday 15 February to recognise the “catastrophic” situation the sector is facing across Europe.
The situation in the livestock sector will be discussed by EU farm ministers and the Commission over lunch at Monday's meeting and also during the “other business” section, when Poland and Spain are to raise points (see EUROPE 11488).
A note from the Secretariat General of the Council of the EU submitted to member state experts on the Special Committee for Agriculture (SCA) acknowledges that “international circumstances such as the continued economic slow-down in China and the broad ranging Russian ban on EU food imports overlap with internal EU trends like growing production volumes, which reflect in part the ex post milk quotas regime, significant stocks in intervention, and low and volatile prices”. The note points out that, in December 2015, European Commissioner Phil Hogan had confirmed the need to “support producers with all the instruments at our disposal, including direct supports, market safety net where necessary and rural development programmes”.
Jean-Claude Juncker rejects EMB calls. Responding to an open letter from the European Milk Board in November, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has rejected the request for a system of regulation of the milk market containing voluntarily reducing production.
He believes such a system to be unrealistic and not in line with the expectations of the main players in the sector. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)