The survival of the European Union’s (EU) production-linked subsidy schemes for the dairy sector are under review and could be under attack soon, European Union (EU) agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has told a conference at Wageningen University, the Netherlands.


She said: “I believe that milk quotas are out of place in the reformed CAP [Common Agricultural Policy]. They put a serious constraint on competitiveness at a time when competitiveness is what we are supposedly encouraging.”


This system will expire in 2015, but if the Commission decided to abolish it, the dairy sector needed to know well in advance, she said.