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Posted by Bertie
By a new transparency law EU countries are now obliged to reveal who benefits from EU's farm subsidies, i.e. Common Agriculture Payments (CAP). The 2008 CAP budget was 55 billion euros. Last Friday the EU Observer published an overview of the biggest beneficiaries of the CAP. I discussed it with a friend of mine.
'By the way, 55 billion euros? How much is that?'
'55.000.000.000 euros.'
'Wow... Where did this money go to?'
'Well, some of it went to the UK:
Queen Elizabeth received around €530.000.
The Duke of Westminster pocketed €540.000.
Prince Charles took €180.000.'
'Are you kidding? These people are no farmers. And they have fortunes of their own, haven't they? What do they need farm aid for?'
'You tell me.'
This reminded me of the Veerman affair. In 2005 it became known that the Minister of Agriculture of the Netherlands, Mr. Cees Veerman, firmly pleading against reduction of EU farm subsidies, had himself pocketed €190.000 EU farm aid for his two agricultural enterprises. Wasn't this illegal? No, it wasn't. Before taking on his governmental duties Veerman had been careful enough to put the governance of both his enterprises in the hands of a so called independent foundation. This made the granted farm aid perfectly legal. No conflicting interests at all, see? But it sure was immoral, if you ask me.
More revelations from the EU Observer:
In 2008 British multinational food companies Nestle and Tate & Lyle received €1000.000 each.
In Ireland, frozen food giant Greencore Group received over €83.000.000 (could this really be true? Yes, check out here). Irish Dairy Board Co-op came second on €6.500.000. Kerry Ingredients Ireland was third on €5.000.000.
France alone got €10.400.000.000, of which €62.000.000 went to the Doux Group, which sells chicken products to over 130 countries worldwide.
Germany preferred not to make its farm aid revenues public; for that reason it may be taken to EU court.
Many individual farmers - many of whom do not appreciate the new transparency law at all, because their name and home town are published on the internet - received €100.000 or more.
Was there any money left for farmers who really needed it? Fortunately there was. At least part of EU's farm aid found its way to Eastern Europe, where it has helped thousands of small farmers to buy new equipment, boost income and have their children educated.
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Posted by: damian ganegoda | May 20, 2009 at 02:26 PM
Wow Bertie, this is amazing. It brings to mind again these long running commercials on Dutch television that promote eating chicken, commercials that turned out were subsidized with EU money. The good news is this new transparancy law is a step in the good direction.
Posted by: Petra | May 04, 2009 at 02:08 PM