A new €92.4 million programme of public-sector support (€45.7 million from the EU budget) to the promotion of agricultural products was announced on July 24th 2008. Some 31 programmes in 16 member states have been accepted for financing. Programmes supported cover: ‘organic products; agricultural quality products [protected designations of origin (PDO), protected geographical indications (PGI) and traditional speciality guaranteed (TSG)], dairy products, meat, wine, fruit and vegetables, oil, plants and flowers and products of the outermost regions’. Announcing the programme Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel argued that ‘it is not enough to produce excellent food and drink; we also need to get smart when it comes to marketing. EU programmes of this sort can really help our producers in an increasingly competitive world.
EC, IP/08/1206, July 24th 2008
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/1206&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en
Providing this kind of financing forms an integral part of EC efforts to support the shift in EU food and agricultural production away from serving ‘necessity purchase’ markets, towards serving ‘luxury purchase’ markets. Only to the extent that this transition is successfully made will the EU food and agricultural sector be able to meet the growing competitive challenge from agricultural producers in advanced developing countries.