Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi’s centre-left government has won a confidence vote in the country’s lower house of parliament on a decree to compensate farmers hit by EU milk overproduction fines.
The decree means dairy farmers will be partially reimbursed to the tune of $1.7 billion for fines incurred by going over quota. Farmers have been staging disruptive protests for some months now, discontent with the existing level of compensation available to them ($1.2 billion).
An offer by the government to raise this to $1.3 billion was rejected, resulting in the further increased