BRUSSELS, Belgium – The European Union may help fund early retirement
for farmers in as many as 10 countries after they join the bloc in
2004, EU officials said Jan. 24.
The pension scheme and other aid programs were expected as part of the
eagerly awaited proposals on the financing of EU enlargement, which the
European Commission was due to unveil on Jan. 30.
Pensions were expected to apply to mostly ex-communist countries.
Funds for early pensions and agricultural modernization are meant to
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help overhaul the outmoded farm sectors in eastern Europe. They are
also meant to compensate farmers in new member states for not receiving
full direct payments from the EU.
The commission, the EU’s executive body, was expected to propose that
new EU members receive 20 to 25 percent of direct payments received by
current EU members, with the proportion gradually increasing over 10
years.
“Aid schemes such as that for modernization, improving hygiene of farm
production or for early retirements will be better for reforming their
farm sectors,” said one EU official.
The official said early pensions would, for example, help consolidate
the highly fragmented and overmanned farm sector in Poland, the biggest
country negotiating EU entry.
Poland has more than two million farms, many of them small and owned by
older people. By comparison, the EU has about 7.5 million farms.
Some 25 percent of Poland’s labour force are farmers, compared with
fewer than five percent in the EU.
Farm sectors in the nine other countries hoping to join the EU- the
Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Estonia, Cyprus and Malta – are seen as much less problematic than
Poland’s.
Two other EU candidates, Bulgaria and Romania, also have a large and
inefficient agricultural sector, but are not expected to join the EU
until later in the decade.
Granting full direct payments to Polish farmers would put excessive
strain on the EU budget, which envisages about 42 billion euros ($57.5
billion Cdn) for financing enlargement in 2004-2006, including money
from agricultural and structural funds.
“The signals we are receiving (about the commission’s proposals) are
not encouraging,” Polish foreign minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said.
