On Wednesday 26 January, in view of the debate that will take place on Monday 31 January in the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA), the European Commission submitted a document listing possible and excluded measures for the ailing pigmeat sector (see EUROPE 12876/15).
The Commission rejects market measures, but in this document (https://bit.ly/3Hblnrx ) requested by the Agriculture Council at its meeting on 17 January, paves the way for the use of certain provisions of the regulation on common market organisation (CMO).
For example, Article 220 provides for compensation for market losses due to veterinary measures taken to combat animal diseases (African swine fever).
Most importantly, in Article 222, “the Commission is ready to look into exemptions from the normal competition rules for pigmeat producers in respect of, for example, production planning”. But, as the Commission points out, the provisions of Article 222 are not accompanied by EU funding.
The other possibilities offered by the CMO “have important limitations”, according to the document.
‘No’ to private storage aid. The Commission argues that this possibility is not widely supported by the industry itself in the current situation, “as it would postpone or even make the problem worse, because the relevant stocks would eventually have to find a market at a later stage”. Nor would this measure be of any real interest to small pork producers.
Julien Denormandie, the French Minister of Agriculture, “strongly supports the implementation of market measures”. Judging state aid insufficient to respond to the crisis, he again called on the Commission to activate emergency measures, citing private storage or volume management (see EUROPE 12876/14).
The Commission provided further information on the situation in the sector on Thursday 27 January: https://bit.ly/3H5LKPr (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)