Brussels, 19/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - Eight countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia) made a joint declaration on bundled support (aid which keeps in place a link with production level), at the Agriculture Council of Wednesday 19 December.
These delegations take the view that bundled support is an important instrument of the common agriculture policy (CAP), because it targets sectors which are experiencing particular difficulties and largely helps to resolve specific regional problems. The current limitation which applies to bundled support in the framework of the national limit and the fact that it is impossible to apply other bundled support regimes does not allow the member states which recently joined the EU to allocate more than 10% of aid under bundled direct support. The signatory countries are calling for the proposal on direct payments to introduce an option allowing countries which apply the single area payment scheme (SPS) to notify more than 10% under bundled support for the forthcoming programming period.
To an extent, the Commission is in favour of a degree of flexibility on internal convergence (rebalancing aid between the farmers of a single country, a debate in the framework of the CAP reform), but not on bundled aid. (LC/transl.fl)