Press Release: Commission proposes overhaul of sugar market

The European Commission adopted on the 4 October 2000 a proposal to modify the sugar market organisation. Faced with challenges like overproduction and strict WTO-limits for subsidised exports, the Commission proposes to permanently cut the production quota by 115 000 tons per year, to abolish the reimbursement of storage costs to producers and to simplify the market organisation by recasting the rules and repealing outdated provisions. The quota regime, the producers' contribution to financing export refunds and the special preferential import regime for sugar from ACP countries and India would be continued ad interim until the marketing year 2002/03. The Commission would then - on the basis of studies and in the light of the budgetary situation look into the possibility of a more fundamental change.

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