Brussels, 27/11/2001 (Agence Europe) - Following Bulgaria and Estonia, Slovenia on Tuesday became the third of the ten Central and Eastern European countries to be actually benefit from the SAPARD programme (Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development) after the European Commission authorised the relevant Slovenian body to manage SAPARD funds. Slovenia has been earmarked EUR 6.4 million a year from SAPARD, the first tranche of which (no more than 49%) can now be released. The Agriculture Commissioner, Franz Fischler, said he was delighted that Slovenia could now profit from the considerable effort it has made to implement this innovative programme, and that SAPARD aid would help modernise and restructure Slovenian agriculture.
The Commission noted that other candidate countries were moving in the direction of completing the necessary procedures to be able to receive their first SAPARD funds and that Lithuania and Latvia could expect favourable decisions in the next few weeks.