In a case that has been in the offing for a number of years, the European Commission recently formally referred Italy to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) over its failure to recover superlevy fines from farmers form 1995-2009.

Under European regulations, the levy should be paid by producers who exceeded their individual quota threshold linked to their volume of overproduction.

An over fine of over €2.3 billion has been paid by the Italian government, and the ECJ case file claim that over €1.75 billion of that figure was never recovered from Italian dairy producers. The case file also cites the attempts by the Commission to get Rome to recover the superlevy bills outstanding from farmers, and how these have failed.

The Commission view is that the money is regarded as a clear state aid for Italian dairy producers, and gave Italian dairy producers an unfair commercial advantage over fellow European Dairy farmers.