Next week, the European Commission may activate a mechanism to provide direct assistance to farmers in all EU countries. This was stated by the European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski, Ukrinform reports.
“We need information from 22 member states with justification of their requests. I hope this decision will be made next week. The main reason for using the crisis reserve is that we have a crisis,” the European Commissioner said.
He reminded that the European Commission had done everything necessary to make it possible to use the EU’s emergency agricultural reserve. From the beginning, this fund amounted to 450 million euros per year and has already been partially used. The first payments of EUR 44 million were made to Poland and Italy to respond to the effects of the bird flu outbreak, and another EUR 56 million were allocated to Romania, Bulgaria and Poland as the EC’s first response to the crisis of grain imports from Ukraine. Later, the European Commission offered to pay another 100 million euros to help five neighboring countries whose farmers “suffered” from excessive agricultural imports from Ukraine.
Given the current situation, the EU has decided to increase the reserve fund to €530 million per year and make direct payments to farmers in the remaining 22 EU countries, which are also experiencing the consequences of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, including rising energy and fertilizer prices and higher production costs, along with the impact of climate factors in anticipation of a large-scale drought this year.
“We are currently waiting for the formal adoption of this package, but everything is already prepared for such a decision. We need to support our farmers, among other things, in response to the symptoms of the approaching drought. This assistance will be proportionally distributed among the member states,” added J. Wojciechowski.