Brussels, 02/10/2002 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday, the Commission published detailed figures on the amount of direct aid received by Member states under budget 2000 which confirm that with EUR 5.8 billion out of a total of 22.3 billion, France receives the lion's share, followed by Germany (3.6 billion), Spain (3.4 billion), the United Kingdom (3.2 billion) and Italy (2.8 billion), . It is the first time that the Commission has published amounts of aid by Member states. Greece is the only country not to have provided complete data on aid granted and thus is not on the table.
To provide greater legitimacy to the proposals on the mid-term review of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the spokesperson for Commissioner Franz Fischler said that this data demonstrated that the fact of limiting to EUR 300,000 the maximum received per farm (after application of the EUR 5,000 franchise and the reduction of aid of 3% a year) would only have little effect on most agricultural payments: less than 2,000 producers out of over a total of 4.4 million (to have received direct aid) in the EU received over EUR 300,000 in 2000, according to the Commission's figures. The change should not "make a great impression as the majority of farms are small in size", he added. Indeed, half the 4.4 million farmers received less than EUR 1,250, and the largest share of the aid allocated (or EUR 5.5 billion) was distributed among relatively small farms (which receive between EUR 20,000 and 50,000 a year).