Agriculture and Fisheries Council, 5th September 2014
European Commission
MEMO
Brussels, 4 September 2014
Agriculture and Fisheries Council, 5th September 2014
The Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting of September 2014 will take place in Brussels on 5th September 2014, starting at 2pm. The Commission will be represented by the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Dacian Cioloş. A press conference will be held at the end of the discussions and can be followed by video streaming: http://video.consilium.europa.eu
Agriculture
EU Ministers will have a detailed discussion on the potential impact of the Russian import ban on certain EU agricultural products and on the policy response. It is the only issue on the agenda.
As soon as the Russian measures were announced on August 6, the Commission acted swiftly to coordinate the EU reaction. Having set up a task force of Commission experts, a meeting with Member State experts was organised - and a monitoring system has now been established which allows the Commission to follow the price for every "banned" product every week in every Member State. Similar meetings take place every week at technical level, but this Council will be the first full political discussion.
Based on an extensive analysis prepared by the Commission looking at the potential impact of the measures, Commissioner Cioloş is likely to underline the short-Term market support measures which have already been adopted for peaches & nectarines (see IP/14/920 ), other perishable fruit & vegetables (see IP/14/932 ) and in the dairy sector primarily through private storage aid for butter, skimmed Milk powder and cheese (see IP/14/954 ). These measures are primarily aimed at reducing oversupply on the EU market.
In the medium term, as a way of creating potential new sales outlets, Commissioner Cioloş announced this week that additional funding (+30 million€) will be available for promotion programmes starting in 2015 which are submitted to member states by the end of this month (see IP/14/961 ) .
While the Commission remains optimistic that the EU agricultural sector will be resilient and be able to adapt and find other markets, it is clear that there will be some producers in some sectors in some member states who will not be able to find alternative outlets and therefore risk going out of business. Commissioner Cioloş will ask Ministers to discuss what targeted compensation measures could be used to address this and how these could be financed.
The Commission has set up a special website with more detailed information about markets and policy decisions.
Contacts:
Roger Waite + 32 2 296 14 04 - roger.waite@ec.europa.eu
Mădălina Chiriac +32 2 297 44 13 - aikaterini.apostola@ec.europa.eu