Brussels - The European Union is to re-introduce import duties for cereals to protect EU farmers from rapidly-falling prices, officials in the EU's executive, the European Union, said Friday.

Over the last year Europe has been hit by record food-price rises, with EU officials pledging on September 17 to boost the bloc's food- aid programme for poor Europeans by some 70 per cent.

But prices for wheat have fallen from around 300 euros (403 dollars) per ton in September 2007 to just 160 euros per ton this October, commission officials said.

That development followed a record harvest of 300 million tons of wheat this year, 20 per cent higher than the 2007 harvest, officials said.

As a result, EU Agriculture Mariann Fischer Boel has proposed re- introducing import duties on all cereals arriving in Europe in order to make sure that wholesale prices do not fall too far and therefore put European farmers under pressure.

The level of duty for individual products will depend on how far prices fall, officials said. If prices stabilize, duties could well be set at zero, they stressed.

Under the EU's agricultural policies, the bloc buys surplus agricultural produce from EU farmers if wholesale prices fall below a certain minimum level (just over 100 euros per ton in the case of wheat).

To forestall such an intervention, the EU is allowed to set import duties aimed at keeping the import price above the minimum price (around 155 euros in the case of wheat) - thereby hopefully keeping European prices high enough to allow farmers to make a living without obliging the EU to spend massively on surplus food.

Fischer Boel's proposal still has to be adopted by the EU commission as a whole. Once that is done, the duties will come into force three days later.

However, exporters who despatched their cargoes to Europe before the measure came into force will not be effected, officials said. (dpa)