BRUSSELS (AP) — France, Germany and 14 other EU nations demanded Monday that more action be taken to protect their dairy farmers from the global financial crisis.
Farm ministers from the 16 EU nations called for more financial aid to be disbursed urgently, saying current measures were insufficient for supporting threatened dairy farms.
"To avoid the large-scale loss of farms, the European Union must take strong and concrete new measures," the 16 ministers said in a statement.
Farm ministers from the EU's 27 nations held talks at the bloc's headquarters in Brussels to seek ways of helping farmers struggling with the global financial crisis and plummeting milk prices.
Outside, hundreds of Belgian farmers demonstrated to demand more help.
Milk prices have fallen by 40 percent since spring, EU farmers group Copa said, adding that without EU action farmers would lose euro10 billion ($14 billion). Farmers complain they have had to sell their milk for less than production costs and face bankruptcy if the situation continues.
When the talks ended without an immediate breakthrough, Germany chided the EU for being to slow to react.
"What does failure mean? It is also the failure of the EU, which doesn't see the urgent need to deal with this serious situation," German Farm Minister Ilse Aigner said.
Copa was equally critical of Monday's stalemate. "Many farmers will go out of business whilst waiting for EU politicians to take action," the group's president, Padraig Walshe, said.
France's Farm Minister Bruno Le Maire sought to look beyond Monday's meeting.
"Everyone is starting to realize the need for urgent measures and a real regulation of the markets at a European level," Le Maire said.
He said the bloc's member states agreed to be more flexible in approving financial aid to those threatened most by the crisis.
The EU is already providing some extra help for farmers beyond the billions of euros (dollars) it pays annually to the agriculture sector for projects including early support payments, storage aid and dairy promotion.
EU Farm Commissioner Mariann Fisher Boel said milk prices had started creeping up again, including in the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and Italy.
France's Le Maire said that, beyond the current crisis, measures needed to be taken to make farmers less dependent on fickle markets.
"I realize how tough it is for farmers," he said. "I see their anguish about what tomorrow will bring," he said.
Some have called for tougher production quotas, but the EU nations have agreed to phase out that system by 2015.
"If we tore up our decision on milk quotas, then our credibility would likewise be ripped to shreds," Boel said.