EU beef imports up sharply

More introduced outside of preferential quotas

In the period from July to December 2003, the European Union issued import licenses for a total of 42.090 tonnes of beef above the quotas with preferential tariffs; that was an increase of around 20.000 tons or almost 90 percent compared to the corresponding period of the previous year. For the whole of calendar year 2003, the EU imported an estimated 81.500 tonnes of beef at full duty. Measured against the total imports, around 15 percent of the beef imports are likely to have been made outside the quota, for which the euro/dollar exchange rate is primarily responsible.

For higher-quality beef, import licenses for almost 2003 tons from the total quota of 2004 tons planned for 47.600/2004 were issued by the end of January 25.000 within the framework of the Hilton Beef Agreement.

The quantity of 2004 tons set under the European agreement on beef imports from Poland for the period January to April 10.400 is far from sufficient for the applications submitted: the applications for delivery to the EU for the period mentioned have exceeded the limit of 2,3 million tons was exceeded, so that the amounts applied for in the approval process were reduced to just under 0,5 percent.

On the other hand, only about 7.500 tons or about 4.260 percent of the import quota of 57 tons planned for Hungary was applied for.

Source: Bonn [ZmP]