Takac: European Commission Must Respond Quicker to Threats Such as FMD Epidemic

Brussels/Bratislava, May 26 (TASR-correspondent) - The future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), as well as the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) epidemic and the state of agriculture in Ukraine and its impact on the EU, were among the main issues discussed at Monday’s meeting of the EU Council for Agriculture and Fisheries in Brussels, said Slovakia’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Richard Takac after the session, according to a TASR correspondent. The minister emphasized that much of the discussion focused on the vision for the Common Agricultural Policy beyond 2027. „We fully reject — and several ministers spoke against it — the merging of agricultural funds with other EU funds. For 60 years, agricultural funds have always been separate. There were also protests from farmers about this. If the EU funds were merged, it would result in the loss of financial resources, which we cannot allow. It is necessary to preserve the independence of the EU agricultural funds and maintain both the first and second pillars as they have been so far,” Takac said. The minister once again raised the issue of convergence and equalization of payments to farmers, noting that Slovakia, even 20 years after joining the EU, still does not reach the average payment levels of farmers in Western European countries, currently standing at around 80 percent of that average. He also expressed dissatisfaction regarding targeted support for farmers and its distribution between small and large farms, advocating for recognition of the diversity of member states and their agricultural sectors, including Slovakia. „We also addressed the issue of simplifying the Common Agricultural Policy, and we are grateful to the European Commission for its efforts to reduce excessive red tape, and make the required documentation faster and easier to handle, so that farmers are not turned into bureaucrats,,” Takac explained. One issue Takac specifically highlighted in Brussels was the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic. He noted that in cases of such crises, for which no one is prepared, the European Commission should provide compensation to affected farmers more promptly and easily. „In Slovakia, around 8,000 head of cattle were affected, mostly dairy cows. That’s a loss of about six percent of the country’s dairy cows, not to mention the gene pool we’ve spent decades building,” he said. He described the current compensation process as “extremely slow” and added that it is still unclear how much compensation Slovak farmers will receive from EU funds beyond what is provided by the national budget. Takac supported Hungary’s proposal that vaccination of animals could prevent foot-and-mouth disease outbreaks and stated that Slovakia’s swift response prevented the epidemic from spreading to the rest of Europe and causing large-scale damage. mf