Brussels, 14/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - After months of stalemate, EU member states reached an agreement on Monday 14 November that will see the Community scheme, which distributes food to the most needy persons in the EU, extended for two years - 2012 and 2013. Almost €500 million per year will be provided from EU funds for this initiative.
The European Aid for the Needy scheme will, then, be extended by two years, in exchange for a statement from France and Germany pledging to work to ensure that, from 2014, this scheme is no longer funded by the EU. “We could accept a transition solution for the next two years, out of respect for the charitable organisations”, which depend on this funding, said German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner arriving at the Agriculture Council on Monday. Germany was one of a group of countries, alongside Sweden, the United Kingdom, Denmark, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which had formed a blocking minority on maintenance of the scheme. Germany's U-turn has broken the deadlock.
In exchange, however, Germany has called for the scheme eventually to be ended, warned Aigner. But the European Commission has other ideas on ending the scheme. In the next multiannual financial framework (2014-2020), it has earmarked €2.8 billion as part of the social cohesion budget for this aid to the least well-off. Germany and the other countries of the blocking minority were unhappy that the funding for this scheme was taken from the agriculture budget but was used for social policy purposes, something they consider to be a matter for member states.
“There is a point which is non-negotiable for the French government and that is the retention of the entirety of the aid for the needy for 2012 and 2013. We are in the middle of an economic crisis, and poverty levels have been exacerbated in many countries in Europe”, said the French minister on his arrival in Brussels.
“I am extremely happy that member states have resolved the problems that were blocking the Aid for the Needy scheme. I have now asked my services to make the necessary changes in order to ensure the continuation of the scheme this winter. As we have shown in recent weeks, the European Commission wants to remain a committed partner for the charities involved in the scheme,” said European Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos.
Following the European Court ruling of 13 April 2011, which deemed that the arrangements in 2009 to provide food bought on the open market were illegal, the 2012 plan had to be adopted with a much reduced budget. On 10 June 2011, the Commission was obliged to adopt a 2012 plan limited to the purchase of available public intervention stocks - a budget of just €113.5 million - less than one quarter of the previous annual schemes. In order to overcome the legal difficulties raised by a number of member states, the Commission brought forward a revised proposal on 3 October. It added a second legal base - Article 175(3), social cohesion - to the existing agricultural legal base, and proposed to maintain funding exclusively from the EU budget. (LC/transl.rt)