In recent meetings with farming and Agri co-operative organisations across Europe, it is clear that despite the recent milk price difficulties and looming superlevy restrictions- that 2015 will result in a record fine for European dairy producers.

ICOS figures project an estimated bill in the region of €750 million being incurred by up to 13 countries from across the Union.

The biggest bills are estimated in:

• Germany-  €300 million
• Poland- €160 million
• Netherlands €140 million
• Ireland- €75 million
• Denmark- €29 million

Other countries such as Austria, Luxemburg, Estonia, Italy, Belgium, Spain and Cyprus will also have significant bills to contend with.

This is projected to be well in advance of the €409 million stumped up by dairy producers from across 8 countries including Ireland last year, and overall European quota being underutilised by the tune of 4.6%.

ICOS has long contended that these fines are crazy at a time when competitor dairy producing blocks have no such restrictions on their production output, and the fact that the fines are subsumed into the general EU budget and are not ring-fenced for the dairy industry simply add insult to injury.

While current proposals to spread the final fine over 3 years for  by Commissioner Hogan are most welcome, we still very much regret that the practical butterfat technical solution robustly put forward by ICOS was not taken up.