Brussels, 05/10/2009 (Agence Europe) - During a long working lunch on Monday 5 October, EU member state farm ministers were unable to agree on new short-term measures to help milk producers. However, given pressure from the street and from 20 countries of the EU (including France, Germany, Spain and Italy) calling for a “new regulation” for the dairy market, they managed to find common ground with the European Commission on measures for the future.. They thus fleshed out the mandate of the high level group composed of EU experts and chaired by the director general for DG Agriculture at the Commission, Jean-Luc Demarty. The group, which is to meet for the first time on Tuesday 13 October, is to reflect on ways to stabilise milk producers' incomes and to improve market transparency. It should complete its work by the end of the month of June 2010. Legislative proposals might then be presented depending on the results of the group's work.
During a press conference, Mariann Fischer Boel, Agriculture Commissioner, reiterated her refusal of new market measures (rise in intervention and refunds) and expressed doubt about the possibility of making any extra money available, as requested by the German agriculture minister, in favour of producers. According to the commissioner, there is no margin of manoeuvre left in the 2009 and 2010 budget. Options available seem unrealistic (calling on EU finance ministers to accept a rise in contributions from EU countries or apply financial discipline, which would take the form of a fall in direct farm subsidies).
The high level group is expected to work on a regulatory framework to be set in place “while keeping in line with the result of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) health check”, the commissioner said (Ed.: ministers often have different views on what this implies, especially regarding the end of quotas programmed in 2015). Items on the agenda of this high level group include: - contractual relations between producers and industry, justification of current market instruments, market transparency, information on markets and products, innovation and research, and the possibility of creating a futures market.
During the ministerial lunch, some 2,400 dairy farmers (according to police information given about 4 p.m.) demonstrated angrily close to the EU Council of Ministers building, calling for financial support to help them face the fall in milk prices. The protestors, with about 100 tractors, sounded sirens and horns and threw fire crackers, eggs and chestnuts. Demonstrators bore banners which read: “Ultra-liberalism - the death of farming”, or “No country without farmers” and “Barroso, don't be an idiot!”. They demonstrated mainly to the call of the European Milk Board (EMB).
Twenty European countries call for “new regulation”
One hour before lunch bringing all the member state agriculture ministers together, the club of 20 countries (France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Italy and Poland), all hoping for a “new regulation”, met and published a “joint communication”. The end of quotas must be accompanied by measures to consolidate the sector and provide producers with a stable and decent living, the text states, based on four main aspects: 1) relations between producers and industry must be balanced (farmers complain about the diktat of the agri-food industry in its price fixing); 2) market instruments (public and private storage, safeguard clause, exports, promotion, labelling, etc.) must be made more effective and more responsive to market instruments; 3) speculative behaviour must be forestalled and the possibility of developing market surveillance tools must be analysed; and 4) solutions must be found to monitor the market situation and ensure full transparency at Community level.
“I won't hide the fact that I wasn't very enthusiastic about having this meeting because I thought that it would raise too many expectations which this meeting certainly cannot fulfil”, Ms Fischer Boel told ministers over lunch. She pointed out that it was impossible to make any proposals that very day. However, two proposals (which should be adopted on Friday 9 October by the Commission) will arrive on the Council table on 19 October: - that on amendments to the rules for quota purchasing (to facilitate restructuring in the sector); and the other on including the milk sector in provisions allowing the Commission to take emergency measures. The commissioner set out the long list of measures already taken to help the sector, pointing out that “the sums involved run into the billions”. “The measures are working”, the commissioner said, explaining that prices in the EU are rising. (L.C./transl.jl)