Financiarul

Small family holdings are an important part of the European agriculture and are not an exclusive feature of the new member states, European Commissioner-designate in charge of Agriculture Dacian Ciolos declared on Friday, in Brussels, during the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee hearings.

‘The eastern specificity is related to the need for a structural policy and small family holdings modernization,’ said Ciolos, answering a question addressed by a Hungarian Eurodeputy.
On the other hand, the European Commissioner-designate in charge of Agriculture said it was of utmost importance that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to benefit from a solid budget, paying more attention to how many pillars the CAP was formed of, rather than its form.

‘Important is the content, the substance, and less the form. There can be one, two or more pillars, but what is important is the fact that there is a EU common agricultural policy in need of a proportionate budget,’ said Ciolos, answering a question asked by the French Socialist Eurodeputy Le Foll.

A question addressed by John Stuart Agnew (Europe of Freedom and Democracy Group) aimed at a supposed financial support for Romanian farmers, granted in 2002, through which they would have benefited from 25 percent of EU budget financing and from 25 percent from the national budget.
The British Eurodeputy reckoned that, considering the British farmers had not received such a support, but the British taxpayers contribute to EU budget, ‘in 2002 this money was wasted on Romania.’ ‘In 2002, Romania was not a EU member state,’ answered Dacian Ciolos.