EU Member States funded more than €4.6 billion in emergency measures for the agricultural sector in 2022, according to figures revealed on 2 November by Farm Europe.
The organisation fears internal market fragmentation due to the extent of such national State aid. Urgent consideration should be given to the multiplication of aid at the national rather than at the EU level. The crisis reserve has proved its worth. However, its budget allocation is derisory on the scale of the European Union, according to Farm Europe.
The figures show that considerable financial volumes have been disbursed to several countries, including €1.2 billion to Italy, which represents 33% of the country’s direct aid under the common agricultural policy and €923 million to Poland, as well as Sweden, Austria and Bulgaria.
A second group of countries (the Netherlands, France, Germany, Spain, Estonia, Slovenia and Hungary) has been quite supportive of the agricultural sector. A final group (the Czech Republic, Greece, Belgium and Denmark) could not provide sufficient support to operators.
“€900 million have been disbursed in 2022, which brings the State aid intensity to 12% of the amount of CAP State aid”, says Farm Europe, which deplores the lack of fiscal space within the CAP.
More info is available here: https://aeur.eu/f/3w6 (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)