The European Commission agreed on October 28 2009 to allow EU member states to pay farmers a one-off payment of up to 15 000 euro in state aid.
 
"The move forms part of the Commission's ongoing efforts to stabilise incomes for dairy farmers, but is of course open to farmers in all sectors," the EC said.

The decision amends the EU's Temporary Crisis Framework, adopted by the EC in January 2009, which already provides for various aid possibilities to facilitate access to finance for EU undertakings.

The October 28 decision means that a separate compatible limited amount of aid of 15 000 euro for farmers is included in this framework.

"This amount can be granted once per undertaking until the end of 2010," the EC said.

However, aid given since the beginning of 2008 has to be deducted, and aid schemes based on the new decision have to be open to all primary producers and will have to complement other general crisis measures already put in place by a member state.

"Allowing national authorities to pay farmers up to 15 000 euro in aid should help overcome the serious cash flow problems which some farmers are experiencing," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development. "Added to the measures on offer at EU level, I believe this will help our milk producers out of the current difficult situation."

Faced with complaints and protests among dairy farmers, the EC says that it expects to spend up to 600 million euro on market measures in 2009.

The intervention period has been extended until the end of August 2010.

Seventy per cent of direct payments could be paid earlier, from mid-October, the EC said previously.

As part of reform of CAP, the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, an additional five billion euro a year was added to the direct payments of dairy farmers to compensate for reductions in intervention prices.

On October 19 2009, the Commission announced an additional aid package of 280 million euro for dairy farmers.

Under the Health Check and the Economic Recovery Package, an extra 4.2 billion euro is available to address "new challenges", including dairy restructuring. This comes on top of what is already available in Rural Development policy, according to the EC.

The Commission has also reinforced the school milk programme by extending the range of products and the age groups of children covered by the scheme. It has also opened a new round of promotional measures for dairy products, the EC said.

"The High Level Experts' Group on Milk is looking into the medium and long-term future of the dairy sector and will deliver its final report by the end of June 2010," the EC statement said.