Brussels, 20/05/2014 (Agence Europe) - At the Agriculture Council of Monday 19 May in Brussels, the European Commission was reluctant to relax, as several member states called on it to do, the planned framework for state aid in the agriculture sector for the period 2014-2020, which it is set to adopt by the end of June. This was notably the case for the purchase of land for young farmers.
France, Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia take the view that purchase of land for young farmers should be eligible for unlimited state aid. However, the Commission intends them to be eligible only in the framework of a more global investment and up to a limit of 10% of the costs of this investment. We have to prevent part of this type of support being “intercepted by other economic actors”, said European Commissioner Dacian Ciolos. The experience of recent decades has shown that land purchase aid regularly leads to an increase in land prices, which benefits nobody but the seller, he argued.
Another provision which has come under fire from several countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Croatia, Latvia, Luxembourg, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Romania and Slovenia) is the requirement to create a “full website” on state aid at national level. The Commission firmly believes that a website of this kind on state aid and the publication of individual aid will greatly help to improve transparency.
The requirement for national support to investment in irrigation to translate into “a reduction of at least 25% of previous water use for all types of installation” was described as “unacceptable” by a dozen countries. Ciolos stressed the need for coherence between these rules and the legislation on rural development.
The planned provisions for the framework for state aid in the form of tax reductions or exemptions under the directive on energy taxation were also called into question by Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Czech Republic, France, Luxembourg and Slovenia. In view of the fact that the directive already lays down a very low minimum tax level for products used as fuel in the agricultural sector (€21 per 1000 litres), the horizontal state aid rules already provide an adequate response to this point, said the commissioner. (LC)