Sep 15th, 2009

Fischer Boel's new proposal for individual-farm quotas is madness and will provoke legal challenge say ICMSA

Commissioner Fischer Boel's proposal made in Sweden at the weekend to introduce individual farm quotas is simply outrageous. Is she even serious? Without personalising this issue, the sooner the Commissioner leaves her office the better it will be for everyone - certainly for the European dairy sector. She has presided over the worst ever crisis in the European dairy sector and that crisis was substantially of her own making. She has increased quotas and announced at every opportunity their eventual abolition and now - having rejected increasing intervention prices and halting quota expansion - she is actually proposing a system of strict, individual farm quotas. Have the Commissioner and her team lost the run of themselves? This would be utterly disastrous for Ireland and probably in excess of one third of farmers would have a superlevy liability. We're warning Minister Smith that if he supports this measure, ICMSA will take an action in the European Court on grounds of legitimate expectation. ICMSA remains opposed to quota abolition, but the proposal now to introduce a quota system to operate on a specific-farm basis to clean up the mess caused by the reckless policy of quota expansion that was pioneered by Commissioner Fischer Boel and cheered on by a lot of individuals in this country is just madness. And where are the cheerleaders now as the farmers who legitimately relied on that policy of increased production now face the prospect of severe superlevy fines or substantial reduction in their dairy herds to go along with their collapsed milk price?

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