European Commission wants "to bridge the agricultural subsidies"

With the reform of the common agricultural policy is taken into account a specific financial support to all farmers who comply with certain common sense agricultural practices that lead to a sustainable business - says the European Commissioner Dacian Ciolos.

Dacian Ciolos argues that it is very difficult to say a deadline for total eradication of disparities in terms of agrarian economy in different regions of the European Union because there are still differences between the old Member States such as Italy, Spain or France.

"What matters to me is that opportunities for all the European regions to be as similar as possible for those who want to develop, those who have ideas and projects to be able to do.

"And that's the ambition of the reformed common agricultural policy after 2013, that opportunities are made ​​available to farmers, regions being able to be as far as possible the same." said Dacian Ciolos.

Asked if there will be from 2014 significant differences between subsidies per hectare that farmers receive in France and those in Romania, the European Commissioner for Agriculture said that the biggest difference is not between France and Romania because France does not have the higher subsidies from European Union, and Romania does not have the lowest.

"The largest European subsidies per hectare are in The Netherlands, Italy and Belgium and they are somewhere around 400 euros, or more than 400 euros.”

"The lowest are in Baltic countries and are under 100 euros." said Dacian Ciolos.

The European Agricultural Commissioner stressed out that Romania's grant is currently 100 euros , and the proposals being made ​​by the European Commission will reach "about 200 euros" nationwide.

"The European average is around 260 euros, so it is important to remember, because it is said for many times: we, in Romania, have the lowest subsidies, and they, in Western Europe, the largest.”

"In the West, as I said, between France, which has about 280 or so, 290 euros per hectare and neighbouring Italy, which has 400 or so, about 500 euros per hectare, there are differences, so what we want through this reform is to bridge these differences, to go towards further convergence which wouldn't necessarily mean equality because production conditions are different, but surely that so much difference from 1 to 4 may not be justified and then the objective is to reduce these gaps." said Dacian Ciolos.


Translated by Ioana Vioreanu
MTTLC, Bucharest University