The European Union should show solidarity with Eastern European farmers

(Photo: AM)

The Secretary of State, who participated in the meeting of the agricultural ministers of the EU member states, said that to this end, he proposed that the EU provide extraordinary transport support for the “liberation” of grain from warehouses so that the crops of Hungarian farmers can be stored after the summer and autumn harvests. . The Ministry of Agriculture also initiated the EU to extend the import restrictions for the five Eastern European member states affected by grain dumping at least until the end of the year. “It is in our interest that the harvest in Hungary takes place safely, that Hungarian farmers can sell their crops,” he emphasized. As he said, the European member states partly expressed their solidarity with Hungarian farmers, but partly emphasized the unity of the European internal market. “That’s why at Tuesday’s EU Council meeting, we had a very important task to show how the normal grain market in Eastern Europe was overturned, why the normal operating mechanisms of the internal market are now insufficient, and why an unusual EU measure is needed in comparison,” he called. attention. He also mentioned that no decision has yet been made on EU financial support aimed at alleviating agricultural damage. At the same time, he also emphasized that this amount would be around 15.9 million euros in the case of Hungary, which “can be considered a political gesture rather than a meaningful compensation”, he said. “This amount of around HUF 5 billion is not entirely proportionate in a case where essentially half of the Hungarian warehouses are full of unsold crops or crops that have just arrived from Ukraine. The agriculture ministers of all the countries involved want to increase the amount intended for their countries, but we can also see that this not all member states support it,” stated State Secretary Zsolt Feldman.

MTI