Eight EU member states exceeded their milk quotas for deliveries in 2013/2014 and must therefore pay penalties.
Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Denmark, Austria, Ireland, Cyprus and Luxembourg must pay penalties totalling roughly €409 million.
The dairy quota system was introduced in the 1980s in order to address problems of surplus production.
Each Member State has two quotas, one for deliveries to dairies (97.6% of EU total), and the other one for direct sales at farm level (2.4%). These quantities are distributed among producers (individual quotas) in each Member State.
Where a Member State exceeds its national quota, a surplus levy (often called "superlevy") of € 27.83 per 100kg is payable in the Member State concerned, paid by the producers in proportion to their contribution to the overrun during the quota year (1 April - 31 March). These figures are established after a redistribution of non-used quota of other producers.
Despite the overrun of the quotas in these Member States, total EU deliveries remained 4.6% below the total quota volumes, compared with 6.0% in 2012/13. In addition, the Netherlands overshot its direct sales quota by 3 300t (4.2%) and faces an additional levy of € 918 000.
According to national declarations for the year ending March 31, 2014, the eight Member States exceeded their national quotas for delivery by a total of 1.469 000 tons.
The number of Member States exceeding their quotas remains limited and the concerned surplus production accounts for 1.0% of all milk delivered or covered by direct sales (0.1% in the previous milk quota year). Some 20 Member States remained under quota, of which 14 at more than 10% below their delivery quota.
The dairy quota regime will be abolished on 1 April 2015.
