EU agrees more transparency in farm aid
EU agriculture ministers have agreed new transparency rules to make it clearer who receives what from the bloc's generous farm coffers.
Under the rules, information on beneficiaries is to be made available to the public online.
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The draft regulation on community financing was adopted by a broad majority of the ministers, Portuguese agriculture minister Jaime Silva said at a press conference in Luxembourg on Monday (22 October).
"[Ministers have] reached a political agreement on a set of rules clarifying certain aspects of the financing of the CAP and introducing the obligation to publish the list of the beneficiaries on a national level," the Portuguese EU presidency confirmed in a statement.
The proposal comes as part of the European Commission's wider initiative on transparency and will make information on the beneficiaries available online from 2008, provided the persons seeking the data register themselves on the website.
Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden are currently among those member states that are most open about the farm subsidies.
They publish names, addresses, amounts as well as the names of the funds from which beneficiaries receive money, according to Danish daily Politiken.
The move came after several analyses showed that, for example, the top 15 percent of French farming companies consume 60 percent of the direct payments from the EU's coffers and that the UK's Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles received in 2003-2004 around £1 million (€1.5 million) in EU farm subsidies.
