The European Union's top agriculture official announced here on Monday that 280 million euros (US$414 million) in aid would be granted to European dairy farmers.

"I'll empty my pocket, and I have 280 million euros for the farmers," Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said at a meeting of EU agriculture ministers in Luxembourg.

"That's (what) I have. I don't have a special account in Switzerland or anywhere else," she told reporters before the meeting.

The concession came after 21 of the EU's 27 member states, including France and Germany, urged for the aid and thousands of dairy farmers lodged several protests, including poured milk onto fields.

The money would come from the 2010 budget of the EU, said the commissioner, but she did not say what form the aid would take.

"It will be for the (EU executive) commission to decide" after listening to the member states, she added.

At the same time, she pushed member states for reforms in the sector.

"Nobody wants to return to the old-fashioned regime of the sixties and seventies," said the commissioner.

EU agriculture ministers agreed at the end of last year to raise milk production quotas by one percent per year before scrapping them altogether in 2014-2015.

The commissioner insisted that the bloc would stick to its decision not to scrap the quotas system.

European farmers have launched a spate of protests, aiming for more financial aid and deregulation amid falling prices of milk product due to the financial and economic crisis, which hit demand.

As many as 2,000 farmers and 400 tractors protested on Monday in Luxembourg, which deployed around 1,000 police officers to maintain order.

In the past months, angry EU farmers set hay in flames in the streets of Brussels, Luxembourg and Paris, even poured truckloads of milk onto fields.

(Xinhua News Agency October 20, 2009)