EU approves new promotion programs for agricultural products

The European Commission on Tuesday approved 41 new programs to promote agricultural products in the European Union (EU) and on third country markets.

The 3-year programs worth 130 million euros (138.95 million U.S. dollars) , half of which comes from the EU budget, the European Commission said in a press release.

This includes an extra 30 million euros of EU funds made available by the European Commission last year in the wake of the Russian ban on imports of certain EU agricultural products .

Russia introduced a ban on products such as meat, fruit and vegetables from the EU on August 7, 2014 in retaliation to EU measures triggered by the Ukrainian crisis. The EU is seriously affected by the measures, because Russia is the EU's second biggest export market for agricultural produce.

"Promoting EU agri-food products on global markets is a strong and proactive response to the Russian Ban," said Phil Hogan, European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

The selected programs, from 18 different member states, cover a variety of product categories, such as fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy products, quality products, organic products, olive oil, meat, as well as combination of different product categories.

Some 17 of these programs target the internal EU market and 24 target third countries. ( 1 euro = 1.07 U.S. dollars) Endit