EU raises farmers’ E.coli aid offer to 210 mln euro

The European Union’s executive has offered an improved 210 million euros in financial aid to farmers hit by a deadly E.coli outbreak, after EU governments said the 150 million euros offered at first was too little.
“In total we will have a budget of 210 million euros which will be earmarked for the measure. This envelope will enable us to respond to the compensation requests for the period from the 26th of May through to the end of June,” EU farm commissioner Dacian Ciolos told a news conference on Wednesday.

The figure is based on the cost of paying European producers of cucumbers, lettuces, tomatoes, courgettes and peppers half the value of goods withdrawn from the market due to a lack of consumer demand, Ciolos said.

Sales of such products have fallen sharply in a number of European countries — notably Spain — after German authorities initially identified Spanish cucumbers as the source of the outbreak that has so far killed 25 people.

On Tuesday, farm ministers from nine EU countries including Spain, France and Germany said producers should be compensated for 100 percent of their losses.

Spanish producers alone have estimated their losses at about 200 million euros a week since the country was wrongly identified as the source of the bacteria. The real cause of the outbreak is still unknown.

If the slump in sales continues beyond June, the Commission said it could propose giving more money to affected producers.

“We will look at the situation again in June and, if there is the need and if we have the financial means, we could envisage that other resources could be mobilised,” he said.

Ciolos said the EU was not sufficiently equipped to deal rapidly with the financial consequences of such crises, and said this should be addressed in the upcoming reform of the bloc’s farm policy from 2014.

The proposed aid package must now be approved by EU government experts at a meeting in Brussels on June 14. Once approved, the funds could be released to farmers before the end of June, officials said.