Levies for milk quota overruns total 221 million euro

The levies for member states exceeding their milk production quotas come to almost 221 million euro for the 2006 – 07 marketing year, according to a provisional calculation by the European Commission, based on member states’ annual declarations.
Seven member states (Austria, Cyprus, Denmark, Italy, Germany, Luxembourg, and Netherlands) exceeded their delivery quotas, according to the same calculations.
Altogether these account for an overrun of 773,728 tonnes, resulting in a deliveries levy of 220.82 million euro. Almost 80% of the total is due to excess production in Italy which exceeded its quota by 6%. Austria exceeded its quota by 3.3% but the other 5 countries who have incurred a levy were each less than 1% over quota.
A European Commission press release says that in relation to direct sales to consumers only Cyprus and Netherlands reported overruns, totalling 420 tonnes resulting in a levy on direct sales of 120,000.
”Milk quotas have played an important role in the past in keeping supply and demand in balance,” said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development. ”But since the CAP reforms came into effect, farmers are free to produce for the market and quotas are increasingly an anachronism. Quotas will disappear from 2015. The question we now have to ask is: what sort of transitional arrangements do we need? That will be a key topic in the upcoming CAP ‘Health Check’.”
Cow’s milk is marketed in the European Union on the basis of quotas so as to achieve a balance between supply and demand and curb surpluses. Each member state receives two reference quantities (”quotas”), one for deliveries to dairies, the other for direct sales to consumers.