Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2009-09-17-Speech-4-008"
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"Madam President, would you allow me to use a bit more than the three minutes’ speaking time allocated to me, because on this important and serious issue I think three minutes would not actually be sufficient.
You know the key elements of what we have been doing. We have been using all the market measures available and here we expect to spend approximately EUR 600 million over a 12-month period.
We have indicated the possibility for Member States to start the direct payment of the single farm payment to farmers from 16 October instead of 1 December, and we decided under the 2003 reform to decouple the dairy premium – EUR 5 billion every year – and transport it directly into the single payment scheme.
We have the recovery package and the decisions taken in the health check that provide another EUR 4.2 billion to face the new challenges, including restructuring in the dairy sector. All this of course is on top of what we can do under the rural development policy.
Just for clarification to Paolo De Castro, intervention for cheese was actually abolished in 1994. I think there must be some confusion between intervention and private storage because private storage was abolished by the decisions in the health check.
As I said, our current approach seems to be working. I am therefore more determined than ever before not to go back to the future in ways which would hurt our dairy sector in the long term and leave our farmers without any kind of predictability.
In other words, making a U-turn on the health check decision is not an option and something that the European Council, the heads of state, explicitly asked me not to do.
So, the idea of keeping the quota system after 2013 is not on the table. Freezing quotas is not on the table, and neither is any return to the use of certain expensive but inefficient market instruments of the past. They are not on the table.
This certainly does not mean that we have now done the job in terms of policy. I think it is time for further action. We need to follow up on the dairy report from this July, use the measures in there and then decide on other actions for the longer term.
If I could start with the report, I will look first at state aid. The report floated the idea that Member States could temporarily offer aid of up to EUR 15 000 for farmers under this temporary crisis framework. The Commission has actually already launched the boat and expects to change the rules in the coming weeks.
The second point is streamlining the procedures for responding to prices in the dairy sector. At this moment, milk is not actually included in Article 186 of the single Common Market Organisation which allows the Commission to take temporary actions quickly under its own power during times of market disturbances. I am therefore proposing that we include the dairy sector in Article 186, and this will enable us to spring into action in the future if we hit serious problems in the dairy sector.
First of all, I would like to say that I am very happy with the questions put by the Committee on Agriculture, because this gives me an excellent opportunity to clarify the actions that have already been taken.
For example, our recent extension of intervention had to be approved by the Council, and Parliament voted on this as well, but, if the dairy sector had been included in this Article 186, we could have acted immediately.
More generally speaking, we could with almost immediate effect mobilise measures stimulating demand and/or we could limit the marketing of milk, and all this would only be put in place on a temporary basis and under the condition that we had the necessary financing available.
The third follow-up point from the report concerns the buying-up schemes by Member States. One way to restructure is that Member States can actually buy quotas from farmers and put these quotas into the national reserve.
As you know, the national reserve counts in a sense as part of the Member States’ total quota, so if individual producers go over their quota, but Member States as a whole do not exceed their quota, with the national reserve included, then no super levy is actually paid.
What I intend to propose is that bought-up quota kept within the national reserve will not count as part of the national quota when it comes to deciding whether we have to add or to ask the farmers to pay the super levy or not.
If the super levy should then be collected anyway, then the part corresponding to the bought-up quota could then be used for restructuring. It might sound a bit complicated, but it is actually a very efficient tool.
All of these steps are actions that we are taking now with an almost immediate impact on the markets, but we also need to do something about steps for the medium and longer term. I would like to thank France and Germany here for their ideas and their input on these different possibilities.
The first longer-term issue is about using contractual relations between milk farmers and the dairy industry to better balance supply and demand in the dairy market.
I believe that this is a much, much better approach than the quota system, and it already works in parts of the European Union.
Milk producers and dairies have clear agreements which remove a lot of the uncertainty. On the other hand, some Member States simply do not use this possibility, but this can be changed by looking for a legal framework for these contractual relations, whilst clearly safeguarding fair competition.
Let me also thank Parliament for its ongoing work in this area. We are all committed to finding solutions. You are, and so am I.
The second long-term issue is about the balance of power, and you know that we have had this discussion a lot of times. We need to be able to see within the whole chain from primary producer to supermarket chains where the added value is disappearing.
We will look into future markets as well and, finally, I think a lot can be done on production costs and innovation.
In order to deal properly with all these ideas for the medium and long term, I want to establish a working group with experts from the Member States and the Commission so they can go to the heart of these issues.
For me, the problem in the dairy market is not only an issue between the Commission and Member States. Parliament actually plays an important role as well, and I am looking forward to the discussion here today on this important issue.
Thank you for being so patient.
Not everyone agrees with my preferred solutions, but I strongly believe that these solutions are working, that they will work, and they are also solutions that we can defend politically.
Mr Paolo De Castro asked on behalf of the Committee that we say what we are actually doing. The top line is good news: prices are improving. For example, in the course of one month butter prices went up by 4% in France, 8% in Germany and even more in the UK.
Skimmed milk powder also went up by 4% in France and Germany, and 2-3% if we look at the average all over Europe.
Average milk prices have been going up, and Albert Deß just told me this morning that the spot market prices are now at 30 cents in certain areas.
We can see that intervention buying on cheese has almost stopped because the market price is higher than the intervention price, which is another positive signal.
We are not yet where we want to be, but we are heading in the right direction. This makes me more confident than ever before that the policy approach that we have been taking from the very beginning is the right one."@en1
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