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Copa and Cogeca welcomed today as a step in the right direction the EU Commission move to introduce new measures to support EU fruit and vegetable growers faced with the Russian crisis and to extend support in the EU dairy sector.

Copa-Cogeca Secretary Pekka Pesonen stressed “The move is a positive step forward. EU dairy, pigmeat and fruit and vegetable growers are suffering enormously from the export ban imposed by the Federal Republic of Russia. The trade embargo from Russia – which farmers and cooperatives are the victims of - has cut approximately half, 5,5 billion euro, of our agri-food exports. We therefore welcome EU Farm Commissioners Phil Hogans announcement at EU Farm Ministers meeting today to present this week a proposal to support fruit and vegetable growers in the wake of the Russian crisis. This will help to stabilize the market but we need to analyse the details first”.

“We also welcome as a step forward the EU Commission move to extend EU public intervention and private storage measures in the EU dairy sector. But with producer prices well below production costs in many countries, the EU milk intervention price must be raised to take account of higher production costs. We also urge the Commission to advance the direct payments before the 1st of December and to ensure that the 2014/2015 superlevy is returned to the dairy sector to help dairy farmers with their cash flow problems”, he said. #dairyaction.

“We also call on the EU to intensify negotiations with Russia to get the SPS restrictions imposed on EU pig meat exports in early 2014 lifted. This would enable exports to to Russian to resume for some products like edible offal and bacon which were not included in the global list of banned products resulting from the political dispute between the EU and Russia”, he insisted