BRUSSELS (AFP) – The European Commission proposed Thursday a relaxation of normal competition rules to help Europe's milk farmers get better deals from wholesalers and retailers.

The plans, which would potentially authorise a sort of cartel, were recommended by a group of industry experts.

Block exemptions already exist for certain parts of the automotive or insurance industries, among others, and despite reticence from Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden, the commission is optimistic it can secure agreement from the 27 European Union farming ministers.

The plan seeks to remedy a situation where farmers often do not know what price their milk will fetch until the point of delivery or even afterwards.

With quotas protecting European dairy farmers to be dismantled in 2015, Brussels is ready to relax rules on collective bargaining.

But the European Milk Board, an umbrella organisation of dairy farmer associations and farmers' lobbies from 12 EU countries, said the proposals do not go far enough.

"The upshot is (farmers) cannot achieve cost-covering prices for their product and many producers are having to close down their farms," said the EMB's Romuald Schaber.

"Yet the proposals for action contained in the commission?s communication offer no effective solution to this problem."

The association says there are 950,000 milk producers in the EU and about 5,400 dairies, with the 10 largest dairies processing about 30 percent of the milk produced.

Aimed at strengthening milk producers? market position through greater scope for pooling, the proposal would apply to 3.5 percent of EU milk or 33 percent of national milk output.

Commission sources said the proposal originally suggested that the value of three quarters of all EU production could be pre-set in this way.

French eco-warrior Jose Bove also warned that the plans, to be implemented in for the next decade, will not allow producers to pool their negotiating strength sufficiently to "stand up to the milk industry and the supermarkets."