Outgoing EU Agriculture Commissioner, Dacian Ciolos, has defended the Commission's handling of the Russian ban on food imports from the EU.
Russia has banned a wide range of food products from the EU in retaliation for sanctions imposed on it over the crisis in the Ukraine. There have been a growing number of calls for support schemes to be implemented for producers who are affected by the situation.
Russia is the number two export market for Europe's agri-food products and around one third of the EU's fruit, vegetables, dairy and meat are exported to Russia. The ban is worth around €5.3 billion a year in lost sales according to the Commission.
Poland previously filed an application for compensation on behalf of Polish producers but now all applications have been suspended until a scheme is implemented.
The Commission is believed to have set aside around €158 million for producers who have had to take products off the market and €30 million for dairy suppliers who have had to put stock in cold storage. Ciolos also said that the Commission has set aside around €220 million to promote European products on alternative markets. However, there is a worry that these measures will be insufficient.
Critics are saying that the EU is not doing enough to help the producers affected. Irish MEP Matt Carthy commented, "Small farmers now need a friend in the European Commission not a bureaucracy which fails to act while their livelihoods suffer." While Polish MEP Czeslaw Siekierski said that farmers were paying the price for a political crisis and that funds to help them should not come solely from the agriculture budget.
Ciolos promised that the assistance for affected producers would be forthcoming, with the first payments likely to start in late October. However, while additional funding is currently being explored, he pointed out that such funding would need to be approved by legislators and that the response to the situation needed to be "coherent, proportionate and effective."
© 2014 European Supermarket Magazine – Europe’s grocery retail magazine, for all your breaking supermarket, convenience store and FMCG news. Article written by Nicole Gernon
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