Brussels, 24/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - According to a provisional calculation Commissioner Franz Fischler's services presented on Tuesday, the amount of levies that some Member states will have to recover from their milk producers having exceeded their quotas in the period 2001/2002 amounts to 277 million euro, down slightly on the 292 million of last year. The total surplus for the EU amounts to 450,000 tonnes.
According to the Commission figures, nine Member states (Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Luxembourg, Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland) exceeded their delivery quotas to the tune of 775,579 tonnes in all, that has as consequence an additional levy of 276.3 million euro. With an excess amounting to 388,965 tonnes, Italy will have to pay over 138 million euro. On the contrary, six Member states (Greece, Spain, France, Portugal, Sweden and the United Kingdom) did not exceed their quotas: the under-use of their quotas amounts to 325,232 tonnes. As for the quota for direct sales to consumers, only the Netherlands announced an excess of 1,115 tonnes, which corresponds to an additional levy of 397,000 euro.
The Commission stipulates that in five years (from 1997/1998 to 2001/2002) the number of working milk producers in the EU has fallen from 808,000 to 590,000, whereas the average delivery quota per producer has increased from 143,000 to 199,000 kg. The global quota has increased slightly, going from 115.9 to 117.7 million tonnes.