Brussels, 22/09/2008 (Agence Europe) - On Sunday 21 September, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel announced that she would agree to a new fund to provide financial aid to help dairy producers adapt to the ending of quotas in 2014, but only under certain conditions. On the sidelines of the informal meeting of European agriculture ministers, she said that “we have no new money” to set up such a fund. The money required, then, would have to come from savings made through increasing the current 5% direct aid modulation rate (reduction of direct payments with funding being redirected to rural development schemes). This is a concession, after the Commission's initial common agricultural policy (CAP) “health check” proposals. At the outset, Fischer Boel's services suggested using money from the additional modulation put in place to respond to the new challenges of climate change, renewable energy, water management and biodiversity.
The commissioner noted that dairy producers were forgetting that, in the 2003 CAP reform, “we took” money from animal premiums and put it into the single payment scheme, with an increase in aid for milk producers. In Germany, for example, this amounted to €1 billion which are put into the single payment scheme every year, targeting in, particular, those in the milk and dairy products sector. This billion euro was to compensate for a fall in prices which never happened. But, “memory is sometimes extremely short”, and dairy producers forget that they have had this money, Fischer Boel said. German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer, told press that he supported the plan to increase the modulation rate to help dairy producers. At the same time, Germany is in an uncomfortable position since, like many other member states, it is not very keen on sharply increasing the modulation rate.
On Sunday 21 September, farmers and alter-globalisation activists demonstrated in Annecy, calling for “a different European agricultural policy”. Estimates of numbers vary, with police saying over 2,000, and organisers claiming 5,000. Among them were many dairy producers from 10 EU countries represented by the European Milk Board (EMB). They fear the disappearance of milk quotas and are pressing for the retention of worthwhile prices for producers. The EMB is calling for flexible regulation of volumes that means that supply can immediately be adapted to demand. (L.C./transl.rt)