EU milk quota transfers plan faces legal hitch
However, the transfers from the UK are unlikely to be approved by that country's Rural Payments Agency division of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because EU cross-border trading is not allowed.
The next step for the Italian farmers is likely to be in the European Court of Justice, where they would make an argument for inclusion of milk quotas in the free movement and trade of people, goods and services across EU borders.
Even if they are successful, this important breakthrough for EU dairy farmers would be a few years away.
Ian Potter, who brokered a deal for a group of Italian farmers to purchase or lease several million litres of quota from 10 of his clients in the UK, said he has only very limited hopes of the Italian farmers succeeding, and he is not looking for more quota to go to Italy.
His Derbyshire-based company, Ian Potter Associates, is the UK's leading broker in milk quota, entitlements, set-aside entitlements, authorisations and sugar beet quotas and contracts.
They were the first company to lease milk quota across the border from England into Scotland and Northern Ireland. They were also first to offer long-term leasing deals for milk quota of up to 10 years.
If cross-border trading was eventually approved, it could unleash a huge transfer of quota from disillusioned UK dairy farmers, said Mr Potter. Dutch quota is worth about €1.95/litre and Italian quota 30c/litre, compared with about 6c/litre in the UK.
The ICMSA President, Jackie Cahill, has called for an EU-wide Milk Superlevy Fleximilk Scheme, to minimise the superlevy fines being suffered by dairy farmers throughout the Union.
In the 2004-05 milk quota year, EU dairy farmers paid €364 million in superlevy fines, of which more than €15 million was paid by Irish farmers - a huge amount of money taken out of a sector already under severe income pressure, according to Mr Cahill.
Surplus quota from member states which do not fill their quota should be allocated to Member States with a superlevy bill, said the ICMSA President. EU dairy farmers as a whole did not fill their milk quota in 2004/05, but still suffered a €364 million superlevy fine - a nonsensical and unfair outcome, said Mr Cahill.
