FEPEX reported its concerns to the Spanish Minister of Agriculture, Isabel García Tejerina, regarding the situation of the fruit and veg sector as a whole, said to be marked by negative results due to a number of causes, including the growing nationalisation of EU markets and the strong pressure from imports from third countries. This situation is getting worse, but the European Commission is failing to introduce effective measures to facilitate access of EC products to new markets, where the rule "everything that is not permitted is prohibited" applies, and with the number of products that have access to large consumer markets, like the U.S. or China, being quite reduced.
FEPEX reiterated the need to introduce effective prevention measures to avoid a repeat of last season's summer production crisis and also raised the need to substantially reform the crisis management measures of the CMO to improve their efficiency, taking advantage of the ongoing reform process of the Commission Regulations on the implementation of specific arrangements for fruit and vegetables.
The Minister of Agriculture agreed with FEPEX on the need for structural and cyclical analysis of the sector and of price trends for the main productions.