Keep sugar quotas until 2020, says farmer group

Copa-Cogeca president Gerd Sonnleitner has called for EU sugar production quotas to be kept until at least 2020, saying that there has already been a major restructuring of the sector on an unprecedented scale in the 2006 reform.

The leader of the umbrella farmer organisation told the International Confederation of European Beet Growers (CIBE) Congress in France that the sugar industry needs a stable market organisation to improve competitiveness.

“After the 2006 reform,” he said, “140,000 beet growers had to abandon sugar beet and 10,000 jobs were lost. Farmers who stayed in sugar beet faced a significant decline in the minimum beet price and the reference price for white sugar. National quotas were reduced to 85% of EU internal demand, transforming the EU from a net exporter into a net importer.”