“We have a number of proposals considered at the moment. Number one is immediate cash flow in terms of what we can do to help overcome this particular problem. And secondly we are looking at all Member States and considering advance payments for 2016 as we did in 2015, for generating cash flow,” Phil Hogan told reporters in Kaunas on Thursday.
Speaking about the problems plaguing the dairy sector, he called on Lithuania’s milk producers to cooperate.
“I would ask him [a milk producer] if he is in a cooperative and if not, he should get involved. Then I would suggest using promotion money to get the Americans to buy his product and then I would probably give him Mr. Putin’s phone number to see if he would lift the embargo,” the commissioner said.
He noted that the milk sector should consider implementing structural reforms in the mid to long term. The commissioner also said that the abolition of milk quotas had had no effect on the situation in the EU dairy market, which had been mostly affected by Russia’s food imports embargo.
In August 2014, Russia imposed a ban on food and farm imports from the EU and certain Western countries in retaliation for Western sanctions over the Ukraine crisis.
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