At the Agriculture Council meeting in Brussels on Monday 15 July, Spain, supported by several countries (Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Poland and Portugal), will be presenting measures to simplify the rules on the promotion of EU agricultural products (€185.9 million in 2024).
Spain and these countries are calling for the penalty system to be rationalised so that it can be harmonised across Europe, and for justification of costs to be limited to “invoices from the first supplier”.
The drafting of ‘guidelines’ to “harmonise the management of simple programmes across Member States as well as with the multi-programmes (programmes presented by several countries), managed directly by the Commission” is also one of the requests made by the ministers from these countries.
“We fully trust that the Commission will be able to address these concerns in the context of the revision of the Delegated Regulation, so that the promotion programmes remain an important tool to achieve the objectives of this policy”, reads the note from the signatory countries.
Under discussion since January 2021, the revision of the promotion policy divides EU countries over the possible exclusion of wine and meat from these programmes to promote agricultural products in the EU and in third countries (see EUROPE 13450/13).
Link to the Spanish document: https://aeur.eu/f/d0u (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)