"EU member states with significant agriculture must cooperate and act jointly to protect the interests of the agricultural sector", Parliamentary State Secretary of the Ministry of Rural Development Gyula Budai told Hungarian news agency MTI on Wednesday in Berlin.

Assessing the series of meetings he has been holding in the German capital, the State Secretary stressed that "the views and interests of Hungarian and German farmers are in agreement on the most important current issues such as EU agricultural funding and the conversion of active farmland into so-called ecological target areas, otherwise known as "greening".

"The largest German agricultural advocacy group, the German Farmers' Association (DBV) has the same standpoint on these issues as the Hungarian Government and the National Association of Hungarian Farmers Societies and Co-operatives (Magosz), the State Secretary added. Following his meting with Helmut Born, the Secretary-General of the DBV, Gyula Budai emphasises that solidarity is required between those roughly 14 EU member states in which agriculture is of strategic importance. "Alone we are weak; together we are strong", he said, stressing that he supports the idea of cooperation and solidarity not just in his role as State Secretary, but also as an association director of Magosz.

"There is a great need for cooperation at discussion regarding the European Union's next seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework", he surmised. "Both German and Hungarian farmers are making a stand for the preservation of agricultural funding at the current level, and with regard to the issue of greening, they feel that a maximum of 3-4 percent of active farmland should be converted into ecological target areas, in contrast to the European Commission's proposal according to which 7 percent of agricultural land must be removed from production"?, he explained.

With relation to the provision of support to help farmers who have suffered damages as a result of drought, he told the press that he had informed his German partner of the Minister of Rural Development's earlier proposal that the proportion of 2013 direct area-based funding that may be paid out in advance should be increases to 80 percent from the current level of 50 percent.

(MTI, Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)