Deputy State Secretary for International Affairs Katalin Tóth of the Ministry of Rural Development represented Hungary at the V4+2 Conference held in Rzeszów, Poland.

The original goal of the meeting was to provide solutions to those issues that affect the whole of Hungarian agriculture, and which are raised by the new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) that will come into force from 2014 with regard to the whole sector. It is the unanimous opinion of the Minister and State Secretary level representatives of the six member states that in its current form, the CAP does not serve the original objectives such as simplification, the decreasing of administrative burdens and convergence.

Following the signing of a join declaration, the conference closed with a press conference. The contentual elements of the declaration include emphasis on such important endeavours as the issue of the budget. If the member states are to conform to complex objectives, sufficient funding must be applied to enable realisation. Brussels is unwilling to continue SAPS payments in their current form despite the fact that certain member states wish to retain the present system, but they have no real elaborated alternative. The most important point for our country with relation to these issues is that farmers who move out of the SAPS system also be provided an opportunity to differentiate their support eligibility (top-up, allocated support, special support, the availability of restructuring support) within the new basic support system. It is of extreme importance for Hungary that those countries with lower direct support payment indices in relation to the EU 27 average are not forced to reduce resources in order to balance support differences between member states (convergence) after the new CAP comes into force.

The participants of the conference expressed their support for the simplification of the system of conditions with regard to greening. The 7% ecological target area is too high a ratio, as it removes valuable farmland from the production sector and thereby does not serve the basic principles of productivity and food security. In addition, realisation should in no way apply to individual farmers, but instead to national economies, and in the case of certain member states to regional limitations.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)