08/07/2009

Dairy crisis: Commission proposes to extend intervention period for butter and skimmed milk powder

As part of its ongoing efforts to help stabilise the European dairy market, the European Commission has proposed to extend the period for buying butter and skimmed milk powder into public intervention storage. Global milk prices have fallen dramatically recently, mainly due to a drop in demand linked to the financial and economic crisis. Since the start of this year, the Commission has initiated aid for private storage of butter and reintroduced export refunds for dairy products. Normally, intervention buying is limited to 30,000 tonnes of butter and 109,000 tonnes of SMP and is only open between 1 March and 31 August each year. The Commission has already bought butter and SMP well beyond these limits (so far, 81,000 tonnes of butter and 203,000 tonnes of SMP). Now the Commission has proposed to extend the period for intervention until the end of February 2010, and proposed that it should be authorised, if the market situation so requires, to extend it further until the end of February 2011. Purchases beyond the normal limits are carried out through a tendering procedure.