Brussels, 04/12/2014 (Agence Europe) - The draft conclusions on young farmers were given a rather warm welcome on Monday 1 December by the delegations at the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA), apart from the paragraph on land purchases, The Agriculture Council is due to proceed to the adoption of these conclusions on 15 December.
Paragraph 11 in the draft conclusions (zero interest rates for the acquisition of land by young farmers) succeeded in crystallising opinions. Similarly to the European Commission, a lot of countries (Germany, Austria, Lithuania, Finland, Netherlands, Slovenia, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium, Portugal etc.) were of the opinion that this kind of measure could lead to land speculation. Some countries (Denmark, Sweden and Lithuania) even called for the paragraph to be withdrawn. All these countries believe that before going any further, it would be better to wait until they are able to assess the impact of the measures on the young farmers that are included in the Common Agricultural Policy reform. On the other hand, several other allegations (Spain, Poland, Hungary, Romania etc.) gave their backing to paragraph 11 and explained that it was only a reference to voluntary measures that could be used, if necessary, to obtain a higher percentage of state aid to help young farmers.
Several countries (France, Ireland, Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Slovakia etc.) indicated that they would be able to support the entire draft, including paragraph 11. The Italian presidency of the Council indicated that it was going to take into account the remarks made by the delegations and present a new draft during the next SCA meeting on Tuesday 9 December.
The SCA examined another raft of draft conclusions (in view of the Council 15 December) on the rates of error in agricultural spending.
Cypriot state aid. After discussions with the Commission, Cyprus is now intending to submit a single derogation on the total tax exemptions for agricultural diesel oil applicable between 1 July and 31 December 2014. From the beginning of 2015, a minimum of 2.1 cents per litre will be deducted, in keeping with the EU regulation. In these conditions, several countries that were not in favour of state aid as initially requested, can now finally give their support. This would facilitate a unanimous agreement at the Council (15 December) and allow for this derogation to be validated. Initially, Cyprus sought to obtain the right to extend the tax exemptions currently applied, to all fuels used in agriculture (EUROPE 11195). (LC)