“The Hungarian Government is continuing the battle for the money of Hungarian farmers. Countries with a traditionally strong agriculture must take joint action in the interests of maintaining the current level of Common Agricultural policy (CAP) funding and assuring simple, farmer-friendly regulations”, Minister of Agriculture István Nagy said following a meeting with French Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume.

Following the bilateral meeting, the Ministers agreed that CAP resources must continue to be maintained at their current level post-2020. “This is also important to enable European farmers to remain competitive on the global market. We cannot ask farmers to perform better if EU funding is reduced in the meantime”, Mr. Nagy highlighted.

“The Government is standing up to protect the funding that is due to farmers. It is unacceptable that Brussels want to spend agricultural funding on migration instead of on farmers. According to estimates, they want to reduce the funding for Hungarian agriculture and Hungarian farmers by 25pc. In Hungary over 100 thousand people signed the farmers’ petition, and the Government also agrees with its goals”, the Minister said.

“In addition to a suitable CAP budget, it is at least as important for funding to reach farmers more easily”, he emphasised. “The number of EU regulations that make access to funding unnecessarily complicated must be reduced”, he added. “My French colleague and I also agreed that the new CAP implementation regulations must bring true simplification for both farmers and the national authorities involved in the distribution of CAP funding”, the Minister of Agriculture highlighted.

The debate on the regulation proposals for the European Union’s next seven-year multiannual financial framework and CAP will continue this autumn in Brussels, during the course of which Hungary, together with France and the other countries of the Visegrád Group (V4) will be representing a joint position on maintaining the current level of agricultural funding and the adoption of suitable CAP regulations.