Existing aid to dairy farmers will continue until at least next February, MEPs agreed. But they also warned that measures taken by the European Commission so far were not enough.

MEPs approved, by 447 votes in favour, 70 against and 16 abstentions, draft legislation to extend aid for buying up butter and skimmed milk powder, which was due to end in August, to at least February next year. The aid should also apply to cheese, say MEPs. But in an additional resolution on the problems facing dairy farmers, MEPs also called for more action to address medium and long term problems in the dairy sector. Parliament has urged the European Commission repeatedly to do more to tackle the crisis.

The Commission should immediately introduce measures to stimulate demand for dairy products, along the lines of the funding for the school milk programme say MEPs. They also want an EU Dairy Fund of EUR 600 million to be set up to aid producer organisations and cooperatives and to support farm modernisation.

"Measures adopted so far are not sufficient to help farmers" said Paolo De Castro (S&D, IT), the MEP responsible for the legislative report and chair of the Agriculture Committee. "With the resolution we approve today, we call for more initiatives and we hope that (...) our proposals are taken into due consideration", he added.

Fairer prices for consumers

The Commission should improve price transparency within the food supply chain, according to the resolution, which was approved by 462 votes in favour, 78 against and 40 abstentions. A code of conduct governing the relations between producers and retailers was also proposed by MEPs. In many EU countries, prices paid by consumers are still high despite the fall in producer prices.

Finally, Parliament asks the Commission to study ways, once export refunds are phased out, of preserving equivalent funding in the EU budget for the dairy sector and allowing agriculture export credit insurance, as happens in the USA.

"Crisis is improving", says the Commission

Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel has announced extra measures to help the sector. These include the opportunity for Member States to provide temporary State Aid up to €15.000 per farmer and to buy production quotas from farmers and put them in the national reserve. These additional quotas would not count when calculating national production levels, thus avoiding the risk, for the Member State, of incurring a levy for exceeding its national threshold.

"The crisis is improving", said Mrs Fischer Boel, when replying to MEPs' questions in plenary. She explained that butter, milk and cheese prices were slowly rising and commented: "We are not yet where we want to be, but we're going in the right direction".