Slovak News Back to the news
Chovan: Slovakia Won't Go to Court Over €3-million Fine
Friday 19 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 19 (TASR) - The Slovak Agriculture Ministry won't pursue legal action against the European Commission over a €3.03-million fine imposed on Slovakia for failing to supervise agro-subsidies properly between 2004-06, Agriculture Minister Vladimir Chovan said at a press conference on Friday.
"We analysed the possible outcomes of asking the Slovak Government to file action with the European Court of Justice. Our final decision is not to pursue any other action in the matter," said Chovan.
The minister was concerned that if legal proceedings had ensued, an inspection on agro-subsidies for farmers would have been carried out again. "With a strict bureaucratic approach, it could just happen that Slovakia would fare far worse than this in the end," he said. He pointed out that the fine for Slovakia is quite low, especially in comparison with those for Hungary (€40 million) and Poland (€25 million).
"We also think that the policies of the European Commission for supervising subsidies following the induction of new member states into the EU haven't been that efficient," he said, adding that the supervising procedures of the European Commission are too vaguely defined. "Not only does the Commission introduce inspection procedures, but it also supervises and interprets them itself. Hence, EU-member states have nowhere to appeal against decisions in principle; this represents a typical one-level approach."
On Tuesday (March 16), the European Commission ordered a number of EU-member states to return European subsidies due to violations of the rules on agro-subsidies. The total sum in question amounts to €346.5 million.
More than a third of the total sum will be returned by Greece (€132.4 million), with Poland to return the second-largest amount (€92 million), followed by Spain (€47.5 million), France (more than €19 million) and Great Britain and the Netherlands (both €18 million). Twenty EU-member states out of 27 will have to give back subsidies. Slovakia is to return more than €3 million.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
