EU New Joiners to Get Biofuel Crop Cash from 2007
Date: 20-Dec-06
Country: BELGIUM
Until now, the 10 mostly central and eastern European states that joined the EU in 2004 have not benefited from all the farm payments available to their fellow countries in the old EU-15.
One payment, called the energy crop premium, was introduced in 2004 after the previous year's mammoth farm reform. A flat-rate subsidy of 45 euros (US$59.25) per hectare, it aims to be an incentive for farmers to grow raw materials for biofuels.
So far, Britain, France and Germany have made the most use of the scheme, according to European Commission data. At their regular meeting, EU agriculture ministers voted to accept a European Commission proposal to extend the subsidy payments.
The EU's maximum area that can benefit from the energy crop subsidy will be raised to 2 million hectares from 1.5 million now. EU governments will also be allowed to fund farmers to grow such crops, with a subsidy of up to half the costs incurred.
"The provision of renewable energy is a growing priority for the European Union," EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said in a statement.
"Farming can play a major role in providing the raw materials for bioethanol and biodiesel," she said. "The energy crop scheme has made a good start. It's only fair that we give farmers in all member states the chance to benefit from it."
The ministers also agreed to allow eight EU countries -- the group of 10 new joiners but excluding Malta and Slovenia -- to continue using their simplified transitional scheme for farm subsidies for another two years until 2010.
When they joined the EU in 2004, that eight-strong group chose a specially designed flat-rate system known as the Single Area Payment Scheme (SAPS) for distributing farm subsidies according to land area from a single pot of cash. It expires in 2008. The rest of the EU uses a far more complex payment system, also chosen by Malta and Slovenia on their EU accession.
At present, the eight countries using the SAPS scheme are exempted from those mandatory environmental obligations, which relate to public, animal and plant health, and animal welfare.
"Extending the SAPS scheme makes perfect sense because it has proved a very simple and efficient method of supporting farmers in the countries which operate it," Fischer Boel said.
