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Simon: 2010 Most Complicated Year in Agriculture Since EU Accession
Wednesday 22 December 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 22 (TASR) - The year 2010 has been the "most complicated year in [Slovak] agriculture since the country joined the EU," Agriculture Minister Zsolt Simon said on Wednesday.
"The agricultural sector will be in the red partly due to several natural disasters that have hit Slovakia. These were floods and things left behind by the former government and its decisions without concepts ... I think that the loss in 2010 will reach the same level as last year," Simon told TASR.
The former government's poor decisions in agriculture culminated in 2009, as the sector suffered a €103-million loss that year, said Simon.
The minister views the main achievement of his six months in office in the fact that 89 percent of Slovak farmers' requests for funds have been covered. "In total we've paid out €342 million, which is a very fair performance vis-a-vis our plan of €355 million," said the minister.
Simon also highlighted the fact that Slovakia joined another six EU countries in an initiative aimed at reforming the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). "We want to do away with the traditional principle of paying out subsidies. We want to see the introduction of new objective criteria, while retaining the so-called unified payment per area system, maintaining the two-pillar CAP system," he said.
"We want to have a rule introduced ... with the first pillar being financed solely from European resources, and the second co-financed under strictly set criteria, and not in the current manner of one member country co-financing at a level of 20 percent, and another at 50 percent," he added.
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