Brussels, 27/04/2009 (Agence Europe) - At the Agriculture Council in Luxembourg on Friday 24 April, the European Commission firmly turned down the request from Belgium, backed by the French, Irish, Greek, Hungarian, Polish and Austrian delegations, for the introduction of export refunds for fresh and frozen pig meat.
“We are seeing prices stabilising because of the reduction in production and we do not intend to bring in pork market support measures,” said European Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel in a press conference. Italy indicated that it would prefer private aid pig meat storage to export refunds. The United Kingdom and Denmark, rather than market support measures, went for trade partnership agreements with pig meat importing third countries.
Ireland, with the support of a group of countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia and Portugal) raised the issue of the difficult situation that the milk and dairy products sector finds itself in at the moment, and offered proposals to make the Community scheme for distributing milk to schools more attractive. The Commission pointed out that all possible market support measures had been re-introduced as a “security net” for the milk and dairy products sector (private storage, intervention, export refunds). It felt that these measures had helped stabilise prices. Fischer Boel acknowledged, however, that prices remained very low in some countries. (L.C./transl.rt)