EU Commission pledges to maintain dairy market
The Commission offered for sale 22,000 tonnes of SMP that entered into public intervention before November, 2015.
The quantity for sale is only 6% of the 354,000 tonnes which went into public storage in 2015 and 2016 (up to September).
The decision to refuse offers and wait for better bids at the next tender underlines that selling at any cost has never been an option for the Commission, said a spokesperson.
Instead, maintaining dairy market balance and price recovery remain its main objectives. It has sold only 40 tonnes in three sale tranches.
Officials have predicted it will take two years or more to sell the intervention powder, and its presence on the market could hold back EU milk prices until 2018.
Farmers protesting this week in Brussels, where the EU Agriculture Ministers Council was meeting, said their current milk price of about 32 cents per litre still did not cover production costs of 40 cents across Europe.
The European Milk Board, representing about 100,000 farmers, sprayed EU offices with skimmed milk powder, and said the EU’s SMP mountain threatens milk prices, and proved that measures like intervention do not get to the root of low dairy prices.
They continued their calls for a Market Responsibility Programme which includes measures like voluntary production and capping of EU-wide production.
Only a real price increase and long-term stability on the market can save milk production across the EU from extinction, they said.
They also urged the EU dairy industry to stop dumping cheap EU milk powder on markets in developing countries.
