Brussels, 19/09/2005 (Agence Europe) - On Monday in Brussels, the European Commission rejected requests from Poland and Austria for additional cereal market management measures. During the Agriculture Council, Poland criticised the current cereal export aid programme and called for the elimination of central European market surpluses to be done as broadly as possible via adjudications on the free market together with export refunds and not only through purchase interventions as is currently the case. According to Poland, this would allow for spending reductions linked to cereal interventions, which are paid for out of the EU budget. This country is also asking for the fact that countries in central Europe are far away from the main markets (North Africa and the Middle East), which leads to additional transport costs for the cereals proposed in exports to third countries. Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development underlined that the current system had worked well but admitted that at the end of the most recent trade round, quantities used for intervention rose to 15.9 million tonnes of cereals, 885000 tonnes of which came from Poland. To take into account the bad weather conditions in many of Europe's regions, Austria has called for a modification of intervention criteria for cereal humidity levels. The Commission rejected this demand. Concerns of these two countries were echoed by France, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, while Sweden called for the getting rid of the intervention mechanism in this sector.