Global Times - EU announces fresh 'milk fund' for crisis-hit farmers

EU announces fresh 'milk fund' for crisis-hit farmers

Source: Global Times
[10:54 October 20 2009]
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Police secure EU headquarters in Luxembourg during an EU Agriculture Council meeting on Monday as farmers demonstrate. EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel announced the release of 280 million euros ($418 million) in aid for Europe's dairy farmers. Photo: AFP

EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel announced on Monday that she would release 280 million euros ($418 million) in aid for Europe's ailing dairy farmers.

"I'll empty my pocket, and I have 280 million euros for the farmers," she said at EU farm talks in Luxembourg.

"That's (all) I have. I don't have a special account in Switzerland or anywhere else," she said, suggesting that little further help from the EU's executive body could be expected.

Her announcement came after 21 of the EU's 27 nations, including France and Germany, called for the aid to be drawn from the bloc's 2010 budget.

Fischer Boel gave no details about the form of aid, saying only that, "You can call it a milk fund or whatever you want."

She stressed, however, that it would be the European Union, rather than EU countries themselves, that would decide how the money was allocated.

"It will be for the (EU) commission to decide," she said, although she added, "But of course I will listen to the member states."

In November, EU agriculture ministers agreed to lift milk production quotas by 1 percent per year before scrapping them all in 2014-15.

But in recent months, European farmers have ramped up protests in search of EU support through financial aid or by limiting supplies, as dairy product prices collapsed due to low demand caused by the financial and economic crisis.

Since 2007, milk prices have, in the worst cases, halved.

But while the European Commission has agreed to introduce targeted aid to the sector, it has refused to go back on its decision to scrap the quota system.

A European diplomat said the state of the EU budget left the commission some room for maneuver for the aid.

AFP