Brussels, 30/03/2015 (Agence Europe) - At the Special Committee on Agriculture (SCA) meeting on Friday 27 March, eleven member states - Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Malta, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - formally requested an extension of eligibility for 2007-2013 rural development programmes in order to better use funding allocated for this purpose.
At the meeting, several other countries, such as Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain, supported this move even though they were not necessarily affected by the difficulties highlighted in the joint letter from the eleven states.
On this point, the European Commission is persuaded that, with the reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP), it no longer has a legal basis for allowing any such extension for 2007-2013 programmes. Moreover, the basic act would have to be amended by co-decision before the end of 2015, leaving, it argues, too little time. The Commission feels, too, that an extension of this sort would be discriminatory towards those member states which respected the deadlines set and which have had approval for their programmes. (Lionel Changeur)