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Dairy aid

October 19, 2009

Following weeks of protests by dairy farmers across Europe over plummeting milk prices, the European Union's top agriculture representative has reached into the EU budget to offer them a financial lifeline.

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A farmer sprays riot police with milk from a cow's udder
In some places, the price of milk has dropped by 50 percent since 2007Image: AP

The European Union's commissioner for agriculture has announced the formation of a 280-million-euro ($417-million) aid package to help dairy farmers cope with falling milk prices around the world.

Speaking to reporters outside the EU farm ministers meeting in Luxembourg on Monday, EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said that she was emptying her pockets to give the 280 million to EU farmers.

Farmers use tractors and wagons to spray milk on fields
Last month farmers from Germany, France and Belgium protested the falling prices by spraying milk on fieldsImage: AP

"That's all I have. I don't have a special account in Switzerland or anywhere else," she added, suggesting the there was little chance that further help would be coming from the European Commission, the bloc's executive body.

Fischer Boel did not give any specific details on what form the aid would take, but she did stress that it would be the European Union, and not EU countries, that would make the final decision. The money is to come out of next year's EU budget.

Last November, EU agriculture ministers agreed that they would lift milk production quotas by one percent annually before ultimately scrapping them in 2014 or 2015. In recent months, however, tens of thousands of European farmers have held protests demanding support through financial or other means.

mrm/AP/AFP
Editor: Chuck Penfold

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