Have the management instruments applied to the market in milk and milk products achieved their main objectives? : Special report No 14, 2009

Milk has always been a strategic sector of the common agricultural policy. In this special report, the European Court of Auditors reviews the operation of the market in milk and milk products since the introduction of milk quotas in 1984, and analyses how the Commission is managing the progressive deregulation of the milk sector initiated in 2003. Based on the situation at the end of 2008, the Court makes recommendations to the Commission on a number of requirements: to avoid a return to overproduction, to monitor price formation within the food chain, to intensify reflection on the prospects for producers in less-favoured regions and on the environmental consequences of a geographical concentration of production, and finally, to reorient milk production towards the needs of the European domestic market and towards high added value products which can be exported without budgetary assistance