Bulgaria to Seek EU Aid for Abolished Milk Quotas

Bulgaria and ten other member states will seek EU aid to compensate for the abolition of the milk quotas.

This was announced by the Deputy Agriculture Minister Tsvetan Dimitrov in an interview for the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) on Friday.

Bulgaria was the initiator in requesting aid in the dairy sector after the abolition of milk quotas and has been supported by ten other member states.

Dimitrov warned that due to the abolition of milk quotas there was a serious danger of bankruptcies in the milk-processing sector.

In his words, the ministry was monitoring the unfavourable trends and was attempting to prevent them through administrative or financial means in order to avert a crisis.

Market measures were also being taken such as the search for new markets and firmly establishing the Bulgarian producer on the internal market.

The milk quotas were abolished on April 1 after they had been in existence for more than 30 years, having acted as a break on overproduction and keeping the prices at relatively normal levels.

It is expected that some member states, such as Germany, the Netherlands and Ireland, are to benefit as they are planning to considerably increase their dairy produce.

However farmers in the UK expressed concern that the abolition of quotas will lead to decrease in the prices of the milk produced by them.

The purchase price of milk in Bulgaria already experienced a considerable drop with 30-40 % in the autumn.

Livestock breeders complained that cheap milk was being imported from other EU member states, which affected their production.

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