Mrs Mariann Fischer Boel, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, took the initiative at Monday’s EU Agriculture Council meeting to raise the point regarding the EU sugar industry restructuring; the assembled EU agriculture ministers were reported to have taken note.
  “Key to success of our sugar reform is the need to take out 6 million tons of quota via the four year application of the restructuring fund”, Mrs Fisher Boel said, “In the first year of application of the reform, we managed to get out 1.5 million tons of production quota. The quotas applicable by 1 July 2006 were reduced correspondingly. The deadline for the next round of application for participating in the restructuring fund is the 31 January 2007. At this stage it appears that applications only in the order of 700,000 tons are being prepared for the next round in spite of the high restructuring aid 730 €/t applicable also for this round.”
  ”The Commission is not going to bail out the industry”, she added, “The coming weeks will be crucial, where some hard decisions by sugar producers need to be taken.” “In collaboration with Member States, the sugar industry needs to take its responsibility to facilitate the restructuring process. If the restructuring scheme fails, the consequences are clear to everybody – there will be no other funds to facilitate the restructuring of the sugar industry and we will have to apply a linear cut in quotas by 2010.”
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•  Commission press release
•  EU 25 sugar balance sheet
Oct 23
