`Europe Increases Tunisia's Export Quota - Olive Oil Times

Europe Increases Tunisia's Export Quota

By Isabel Putinja
Jul. 27, 2015 09:57 UTC

The annual export quota for olive oil from Tunisia to the European Union (EU) has been increased by 25,000 tons.

The deci­sion to increase the annual quota was announced at a joint press con­fer­ence held by Federica Mogherini, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, and Tunisian Prime Minister Habib Essid in Brussels on July 20, 2015, fol­low­ing the meet­ing of EU min­is­ters of exter­nal affairs.

Previously, olive oil exports from Tunisia to the EU were sub­ject to an annual quota of 56,700 tons, with the new quota bring­ing this to a total of 81,700 tons per year. Mogherini also announced that Tunisia would no longer be sub­ject to the monthly export quo­tas which were fixed by the European Commission ear­lier this year.

More than 70 per­cent of Tunisia’s olive oil is exported to the EU, mostly to Italy and Spain, two coun­tries which suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant losses to their olive crops dur­ing the last har­vest. Meanwhile, Tunisia expe­ri­enced an excel­lent crop and exported a record 242,000 tons from November 2014 to the end of June 2015, seven times more than the pre­vi­ous sea­son. /olive-oil-busi­ness/africa-mid­dle-east­/­tunisian-olive-oil-exports-reach-record-high­/48184

In addi­tion to olive oil being Tunisia’s main agri­cul­tural export to the EU, it is also an impor­tant agri­cul­tural resource which pro­vides direct and indi­rect employ­ment to more than a mil­lion Tunisians.

Also announced at the press con­fer­ence was a finan­cial sup­port pack­age of 23 mil­lion Euro towards secu­rity reform in Tunisia fol­low­ing the deadly attacks in Sousse, and the deci­sion to include Tunisia as the first Arab part­ner in the research pro­gram Horizon 2020.



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