The European Commission Regulation opening tendering procedures to determine the amount of private storage aid to be provided for olive oil is expected to be published on Monday, 11 November, in the Official Journal of the EU (see EUROPE 12348/14), and the first tender should be launched on 21 November.
The Regulation does not set either a maximum storage volume or a budget for these operations. There are four calls for tenders planned, which will allow the quantities needed to rebalance the market to be stored: from 21 to 26 November 2019, from 12 to 17 December 2019, from 22 to 27 January 2020 and from 20 to 25 February 2020.
The scheme will cover extra virgin olive oil, virgin olive oil and lampante olive oil. For the measure to be effective, the aid will be granted for olive oils in bulk and for quantities of not less than 50 tonnes.
In order to ensure the system is flexible, the amount of aid to store the product will be set by a tendering procedure. To allow different operators to benefit from the measure, each operator may submit a maximum of one tender for each category of olive oil in each tendering period. Tenders involving olive oil that is already in storage might also be accepted. The storage period has been set at 180 days and the minimum quantity per tender will be 50 tonnes.
The calls for tender will be open to operators in all olive oil-producing countries (Spain, Greece, France, Italy, Cyprus, Malta, Portugal and Slovenia). (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)