EU still chasing superlevy from Italian farmers

Even as the milk quota system comes to an end, the European Commission is still trying to get Italian farmers to pay superlevy bills for producing too much milk as far back as 20 years ago.

The Commission recently referred Italy to the Court of Justice for failure to recover levies due from Italian farmers.

Italy exceeded its national milk quota every year from 1995 to 2009, and the Italian state paid the Commission the due superlevy amounts (€2.3 billion).

However, despite repeated requests by the Commission, the Italian authorities did not take appropriate measures to effectively recover the levy payable from individual farmers or dairies.

According to the Commission. this undermined the quota regime, and distorted competition with dairy farmers in other countries who respected quotas, and took steps to pay their individual superlevy bills. The Italian policy was also unfair for Italian taxpayers.

The Commission estimates that levy penalties worth €1.34bn remain outstanding from Italian farmers.

The referral to the Court of Justice is the third and final step of EU infringement procedures.