In tandem with our European Umbrella organisation COPA COGECA, and our fellow co-operative and farm organisations, ICOS will be participating in a mass protest in Brussels on 7th September.

The purpose of the demonstration is to respond to the drastic situation hitting EU Agri markets across Europe and the relative slow response by Farm Ministers and the Commission to react to same.

The rally will take place outside the EU Agriculture Ministers extraordinary meeting scheduled on September 7th to underline the unprecedented situation and demand action.

As you can see elsewhere in this newsletter, ICOS has long driven a campaign to take concrete actions and drive reform that would aim to protect co-operatives and their farmer members from severe market difficulties such as this, that seem to now be hitting the Agricultural community in 3 year intervals. This current difficulty has been further exacerbated by a Russian ban on the bulk of European Agri goods, which has left co-operatives and farmer members across Europe the innocent victims of geopolitics out of our control.

We feel that our proposals are fair, cost effective and market orientated, and in fairness the commission has taken some initial steps in the area of adjusting the rules for intervention and private storage aid to help this.

We hope that the voices of over 70 Agri organisations representing thousands of co-operative businesses on behalf of millions of farmers from across Europe will be heard.

Because of the nature of our island location, we know it will be difficult to get people to Brussels on the day, but for anyone who wishes to join us, please contact the ICOS Brussels office at cmulvihill@icos.ie, and we will do our utmost to facilitate.

Details for the protest are:

September 7th 2015 @ 13.00

Outside European Agriculture Ministers meeting, 175 Rue de la Loi, B-1048 Brussels

By Conor Mulvihill