An EU study presented to the newly formed European Parliament's Agriculture Committee showed that input costs such as energy, animal feed and labour are still squeezing margins tightly right across the continent. The "cost crisis" figures showed that beef producers in the UK, France and Germany have faced input costs that are two or three times higher than those in Canada and Brazil. Predictions from international bodies such as the OECD and the FAO also show that grain and energy prices are set to remain unstable for the 2009-18 period.
Further gloomy discussions followed when the Committee met face to face with Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, who came to defend the action taken to date by the EU to stabilise the European dairy sector, namely export refunds, extending intervention and a greater use of the EU school milk scheme.
The Danish Commissioner came under fire from German, French, Hungarian, and many other Euro-MPs who expressed their dissatisfaction, arguing that more needs to be done to help in the time of crisis.
Likewise, to applause so great that one could have been forgiven for thinking that a private cheerleading squad had been sneaked past the Parliament's security checks, far-left French Green MEP José Bové enthusiastically criticised the Commission's stance, calling for an immediate cut in milk quotas of "at least five per cent", amongst other things.
We at the UFU in Brussels led a private cheer for our own MEPs Jim Nicholson and Diane Dodds, who talked more sensibly on tackling the consumer-producer price gap, both emphasised that there is also a great and urgent need for a more sensible EU policy on imported GM animal feed.
Preparations for Agriculture Council
Diplomats and Commission staff will this week prepare the ground for the next Agriculture Council which takes place on Monday, September 7. Items on the agenda include a debate on the Commission's milk crisis report, agreement on poultrymeat marketing standards, an update on the work of the High Level Group on the Competitiveness of the Agro-food Industry and a request from the Netherlands on the transport of live animals.
EU greenhouse gas emissions fall for fourth consecutive year
The European Environment Agency (EEA) has issued provisional estimates on the EU's Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions for 2008. The figures show a decrease in emissions for the fourth year running. The EEA estimates that emissions from the EU-15 member states fell by 1.3% in 2008 compared with 2007 levels, taking them to 6.2% below their levels in the base year (1990 in most cases). This represents another significant step by the EU-15 towards meeting its Kyoto Protocol target. EU-27 emissions are estimated to have fallen 1.5% in 2008 to stand 13.6% lower than the base year level.
The vast majority of the decline in emissions in 2008 was due to lower CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the energy, industry and transport sectors. The 2008 emission reductions reflect the effects of the global economic recession with correspondingly reduced freight transport. The official 2008 greenhouse gas emissions for the EU will not be available until June 2010.
Irish Ministers' milk message to the Commission
Irish Agriculture minister, Brendan Smith, has recently written to Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel stating that dairy intervention prices should be increased and that the scope of export refunds expanded. He supports the Commission's view that milk quota increases are not responsible for the current situation but requests a strategy to accompany the phasing-out of the milk quota regime.