Brussels, March 23 - Europe's farm chief refused demands by some European Union ministers, who want to prop up weak milk prices, that the bloc should reconsider dairy market reforms it agreed last year.
At least five countries want urgent action and possibly to delay annual increases in EU milk production quotas, negotiated last November under the "health check" -- or mini-reform -- of EU farm policy, to give dairy prices a chance to recover.
Speaking at a monthly meeting of EU farm ministers, Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said on Monday she was not about to reopen the 'health check', adding that suspending quota increases would not solve the current problem.
"While I am happy to discuss with you the management of support measures, I have to stress that I am not ready to discuss a complete re-orientation of the EU dairy policy as suggested by some of you," Fischer Boel told the ministers.
"I'm not going to step back from the agreement in the health check. We have to be brave enough to say it clearly. Blurred messages are just causing uncertainty among farmers."
Austria, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia circulated a joint note to the European Commission and other national EU delegations suggesting several support measures to help milk prices, saying "unconventional approaches" were now needed.
Nearly all EU support tools had already been activated to prop up prices, she said. Only two options had yet to be used: subsidies to use skimmed milk powder in feed and for processing into casein, an important protein found in fresh milk. But neither would be efficient in current circumstances, she said.
Fischer Boel said EU milk production was expected to come in at between 4 and 5 percent below the maximum quota quantities this marketing year, with the same undershoot in 2009/10.
"This clearly shows that farmers understand that it is market prices and their cost structure rather than the quota levels that should determine their production decisions. Quotas are not an obligation to produce, but a possibility," she said.
"We should therefore stop this purely political discussion and focus on the real economic problem," she told the ministers.