Six EU countries face £62m superlevy for exceeding milk quota
Producers in six EU member states will pay almost £62m in fines for exceeding their milk quotas in the year to the end of March 2012.
Production in Austria, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, Cyprus and Luxembourg went over quota, triggering the superlevy penalty of about 21.7p/litre.
The above quota production accounts for less than 0.2% of all milk delivered or covered by direct sales, while producers in 10 member states delivered at least 10% lower than quota. Total EU wholesale milk deliveries were 4.7% below quota.
The largest margin of over production was in Austria, at 4.2%, while producers in Bulgaria met less than half of their quota.