Bulgarian Farmers Demand Referendum on EU Grants Issues

Business » INDUSTRY | September 15, 2010, Wednesday // 14:03
Bulgaria: Bulgarian Farmers Demand Referendum on EU Grants Issues Bulgarian farmers are concerned that if the EU subsidies for agriculture for Bulgaria are not aligned with those for the other EU member states, the agriculture in the country will die. Photo by BGNES

Bulgarian farmers have announced their demand for conduction of a referendum on whether the Bulgarian government should negotiate the agriculture EU grants.

Representatives of the Bulgarian National Association of Grain Producers, the Branch Union of Bulgarian Breeders and the Agrarian People's Union have stated that the EU grants should be of equal size in all EU member states.

They have announced that currently the EU grants in Bulgaria are three times smaller than the amounts in most of the other EU member states.

The initiators of the referendum have explained that their goal is to speed up the alignment of the EU grants because in their words, according to the current contract, the equalization is supposed to happen by 2016.

The Chair of the Agrarian People's Union, Stefan Lichev, has expressed his concern that if the situation does not change, Bulgaria will not have any agriculture by 2016.

"This abnormal situation can worsen the crisis in the agriculture," he said.

Farmers have defined as "extremely unfair" the fact that Bulgaria receives three times less subsidies for agriculture than other countries.

The Head of the National Association of Grain Producers, Radoslav Hristov, has explained that the government should assist in persuading the EU institutions.

"They go to Brussels for official meetings and say they want an alignment of the grants. This has already been done. The answer is always the same. "You have a contract, you have signed it and you should have read it before signing it." Without pressure, nothing would be negotiated because the answer from the EU is always the same," Hristov said.

Gospodin Gospodinov, Chair of the Branch Union of Bulgarian Breeders, has stated that the smaller subsidies not only endanger the agriculture, but will also affect the commodity prices in the country.

"I hope that the reason why the EU does not want to align the subsidies is not that they want our market, even as small as it is, to become a market for their commodities. In this way our agriculture will die," Gospodinov said.

The initiators will collect signatures for the referendum until December 8. They have stated they need at least 500,000 signatures in order to conduct a referendum.

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Tags: farmers, agriculture, EU grants, subsidies, EU

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