The EU is to form a panel of “experts” to look into “long-term arrangements” for the bloc’s dairy sector – but the move seems unlikely to stem growing farmer anger across member states at the price of dairy products.
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Europe’s agriculture ministers met yesterday (5 October) to discuss what many see as a crisis in the continent’s dairy sector.
Last month, farmers across the EU held days of protests at what they see as low milk prices across the bloc.
Unions agreed to a pause ahead of yesterday’s EU meeting during which ministers agreed to form a “High Level Expert Group on Milk”.
EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said the panel would look to “reduce market volatility, improve transparency and discuss how farmers can improve their organisation”.
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By GlobalDataHowever, the farmer protests resumed yesterday with a demonstration in Brussels.
François Lucas, president of French farmers union the Coordination rurale, one of the prime movers in the two-week strike seen in France last month, said yesterday’s protest “had fallen on deaf ears” and that the response of the EU to the “distress” in the sector had been one of “contempt.”
Lucas said future action would reflect a “hardening” in the position of farmers across Europe and could be enlarged to include farmers outside the dairy sector.
Meanwhile, France’s leading dairy farmers union, the FNPL, which has maintained a more moderate line, said it regretted that there had been “no calling into question whatsoever” of EU policy in the milk sector at the ministerial meeting.
Having branded last month’s strikes as “irresponsible,” the FNSEA has called for a day of action on 16 October.
