On the recommendation of the Minister for Rural Development, the Prime Minister has relieved Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Dr. Zsolt Horváth of his duties as of August 30, 2011.

The Deputy State Secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development in charge of International Relations was approached by the leadership of the ministry a year ago and asked to take part in the preparatory stage of the Presidency and in the work of the ministry during the period as President of the Union.

Earlier in his career, Dr. Zsolt Horváth had spent many years abroad in the service of the State Department and has great diplomatic experience. The Deputy State Secretary accepted the task for a one-year period. After the end of the EU Presidency and in agreement with the head of the Ministry, he personally asked to be relieved of his duties and will go into retirement.

As has been previously reported, it is an outstanding achievement of both the Ministry of Rural Development and the Hungarian Presidency, that the ministers of agriculture voted to accept the council conclusions on the future of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after 2013 by a majority well in excess of the qualified level. It has therefore been decided that the EU will continue to support agriculture, agricultural production and farmers in the future.

The Hungarian Presidency, in co-operation with Austria, the Czech Republic, Luxembourg and Slovakia, succeeded in achieving that the Common Fisheries Policy will in the future also support freshwater fish farming.

There will be changes in the food labelling regulations. From now on, labels will be more legible and the number of food products on which it is obligatory to indicate the country of origin will also increase.

The Hungarian Presidency also achieved significant headway on the issue of milk market regulation. The milk package boosts the bargaining power of milk producers, regulating and improving their contractual relationships.

Following two years of continued debate in the Environmental Council, the ministers came to a unanimous agreement on increasing the rate of collection and recycling of electric and electronic waste.

The Hungarian Presidency also overcame several extraordinary and unexpected situations. During the German Dioxin Contamination crisis, it was thanks to the determined and consistent pressure imposed by Sándor Fazekas that the Council voted to assist producers by freezing unmarketable pork-meat stocks for three months. In this way, we succeeded in saving the European pork-meat market from collapse.

In view of the German E.coli epidemic, Sándor Fazekas convened an extraordinary Council meeting, where a decision was made to compensate vegetable producers. On the recommendations of the Council, the European Commission raised the compensation budget to 210 million Euros. The Commission is expected to decide today on how much compensation each Member State will receive.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)