European Coordination Via Campesina on milk quota

To avoid a social catastrophe in rural areas, the European milk quota should be decreased and improvements be made to the distribution of production. Export subsidies should be halted, and more autonomous modes of production should be developed, according to the European Coordination Via Campesina. The European milk market is saturated today because of the decisions taken by the EU since 2003. The producers sell their milk at price below the costs of production and the weakest will disappear if the EU does not change its policy. The re-establishment of export subsidies reinforces inadmissible dumping regarding third countries which never really stopped. While the European quota was already far above European demand, the EU still decided to increase quotas further, claiming a flourishing world market. The deregulation policy decided in 2003 and 2008 has been denied by the facts.
 

The European Union has to decrease its quota, establish criteria for redistribution of production and guarantee a milk price which remunerates producer’s work. It is important to preserve the maximum of producers and to maintain fodder-based milk production in all regions. The Council has to cancel the removal of milk quotas planned for 2015 according to the European Coordination Via Campesina. A new “restructuring” as Ms Fischer Boel proposes will not solve the crisis. The last 25 years have demonstrated that the huge decrease in the number of milk producers did not lead to falling production, but intensified and concentrated it in the regions with the lowest costs of production, to the detriment of European cohesion and of rural development.
 

It is urgent for the EU to discourage over intensive milk production based on imported soya. The current climate and energy crisis oblige us to give priority to grasslands, which store carbon, to the use of local animal feed and to better distributed milk production throughout Europe in order to be closer to consumers. 
 

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