How best to halt the fall in milk prices and relieve producers?
The measures taken or envisaged by the European Commission to resolve the current crisis are inadequate, said Agriculture Committee MEPs and producer representatives in a debate on Tuesday 21 July. A majority of committee members advocated readjusting quotas decided as part of the common agricultural policy (CAP) health check. “We all agree on the fact that the current proposals are inadequate”, said Agriculture Committee Chair Paolo De Castro (S&D, IT), after the debate, adding that the situation in the dairy sector could soon be addressed in an own-initiative report. He also hoped that Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel would be able to reply to MEPs’ questions on this topic at the Agriculture Committee’s next meeting, on 1 September. The Commission proposals are “not likely to bring about a soft landing for the sector but rather a rapid crash”, said Albert Dess (EPP, DE). Mr Dess called on the Commission to propose suspending the increase in production quotas and “not to
