Bulgaria is among the countries in the European Union, whether the largest state aid to farmers. This was reported by the European Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski, who is on a working visit to our country, reported BNT.
"In 2023, the situation improved, but the gap between imports and exports remained. It was necessary to support agricultural producers. The other group is the large farmers who exceeded the threshold of 280 thousand euros. Bulgaria gave state aid. In the EU, this aid amounts to 452 million euros. It is important to say that things are going well in Bulgaria, but the values for state aid are much lower. We come to the conclusion that more substantial measures are important in the EU so that there are no big differences in foreign imports and exports," Wojciechowski pointed out.
For his part, the Minister of Agriculture, Georgi Takhov, hopes that the payments for Bulgarian farmers will be equal to the European ones.
"First of all, it is necessary to remove the administrative burden on our farmers in order to predictably receive the assistance to them. Secondly, we propose to extend by 1 year the term of the projects to support the development of rural areas and forestry", he said.
The minister also called to consider increasing the thresholds for the so-called "Ukrainian aid", since in some European countries it is calculated per hectare of area and per head of animal.
"It so happens that our big farmers already reached these thresholds in 2022," Takhov pointed out.