Socialist MEP Clara Aguilera has called for greater legal certainty so that the olive oil sector can carry out “collective storage”, which involves withdrawing part of the oil from the market when there is overproduction. Aguilera has raised this demand for more legal guarantees during a joint appearance of Agriculture Commissars, Phil Hogan, and Competition, Margrethe Vestager in the Committee on Agriculture of the European Parliament.
Collective storage is a vital practice to stabilize the amounts between different campaigns and to ensure reasonable prices for consumers, and for which the sector is still waiting for clear authorization from the competition authorities.
Commissioner Vestager has been willing to assess a solution for the storage of olive oil, but has insisted on the need for the Spanish Government to make a proposal
“This measure is necessary and urgent for the Spanish olive oil sector. I hope the government is up to it and presents a proposal to allow the collective storage of olive oil”, said Clara Aguilera, who is vice-president of Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
The socialist MEP recalled that one of the problems of European agriculture today is the scarce margin that reaches the farmer the price of agricultural products, which is having a major impact on the decline in agricultural income. “So far it has been the national governments of 23 countries that have put in place a different regulatory initiative to tackle unfair commercial practices,” Aguilera said. The CAP, on the other hand, has been losing market regulation instruments, making farmers the weakest link in the food supply chain“.
Aguilera has urgently called for “a Community legislative framework of reference to tackle unfair commercial practices with effective and dissuasive sanctions”
For the MEP “it is necessary to strengthen the transparency in the prices of the food chain and to clarify the scope of the norms of competition with respect to the specificity and agricultural exception”.
Source: Socialists in the European Parliament
