Acceptance of cheese in private storage suspended

The European Commission has decided that as of today, applications for private storage of cheese can no longer be submitted.

The suspension of applications is provided for by Regulation No. 992/2014 published today in the Official Journal of the European Commission (link to the regulation: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/LV/TXT/?uri=uriserv:OJ.L_.2014.279.01.0017.01.LAV ). Applications submitted up to and including yesterday will still be accepted.

The European Commission has decided to suspend the acceptance of applications for private storage aid for cheese, based on the information communicated by the Member States so far on the submitted aid applications. This information has led to the conclusion that the largest volume of products applied for aid is in countries that were not the largest exporters of cheese to Russia, moreover, the volume of products many times exceeded the volume of cheese exports of these countries to Russia. This, in turn, has led the European Commission to question both the ability of the aid scheme to achieve the objective of market stabilisation and, consequently, the usefulness of the budget spent on aid.