Luxembourg, 18/04/2005 (Agence Europe) - The President of the Court of Justice, Vassilios Skouris, has given permission for Latvia, Hungary and Lithuania to intervene in a trial between Poland and the Council on payment modalities for direct aid granted to various products (dairy products, shell fruit, etc). Poland is challenging the principle of staggering the payment of this direct aid according to a mechanism which, it states, was supposed to be a one-off solution. The Commission has been granted the right to intervene alongside the Council.
Poland is challenging a provision of decision 2007/281/EC of the Council of 22 March 2004 adapting the accession act of the new Member States further to the recent reform in the common agriculture policy. From the beginning of its negotiations on accession to the EU, Poland believed that the mechanism whereby direct aid is paid in instalments was a one-off solution, and that it could not, in theory, be set up for aid granted to Polish agricultural income. It takes the view that the 2004 decision calls into question the compromise reached during the accession negotiations and infringes the principle of good faith.