First, let me start with the subsidy. With her, the story is as follows: In the EU, there are two ways to subsidize the income of agricultural producers. To emphasize income, these are not investments. And this is not from 2007, but from 1996-97 in the EU.
When we entered the EU, the negotiators at that time, unfortunately, a very weak team of negotiators who knew languages well, but did not understand anything about economics. Even more than agriculture. There were two options to subsidize farmers' income: One was per unit area per unit of funds. You cultivate 10 acres, here are 10 units of funds. The other way, more common in Western Europe, was farming. Not only the land is counted there, but also what is on that land - animals, orchards, etc. Ours chose this method for ease. And nobody blames us for not consulting the specialists then. There was a lady there who agreed with everything - this is known. This is what Prof. Ognyan Boyukliev from the Institute of Economics of the BAS told Lily Marinkova in the FACTS studio. He commented on the words of the former Minister of Agriculture, Kiril Vatev, that Bulgaria is a country in which, if due to some crisis imports stop, famine will occur in just three months.
Here is more from Assoc. Boyukliev's comment:
But it is not the fault of the farmers, tenants and grain producers, who are mostly blamed. The problem is another - that this grain is not used as fodder, for example. Going down the chain that the minister constantly repeats, but I don't think he understands it, I say it most frankly. Because he said a lot of nonsense during that period when he was a minister. Feed must be made, animals are fed with feed and along the chain we reach dairy and meat products. And we get to the market and the stalls. And since we are talking about added value, it is the biggest one on the tourist's plate.
I know the minister, I participated together with him in an initiative and with Academician Atanasov/ a great Bulgarian scientist in the field of agriculture, genetics at that/. With this initiative, we wanted to build an agrarian chamber, and it was built. And there we wanted to unite all branches. Unfortunately, however, Kiril Vatev put in a lot of effort and financial resources, but he was not elected to the leadership of this chamber. And this is where all the controversy comes from. This is what I know and have seen with my own eyes.
When Vatev became minister and the first protests began, the industry was united. He did his best to separate it.
More from Assoc. Boyukliev's analysis of what Kiril Vatev has done as Minister of Agriculture and whether our economy will really perish without imports - you can find in the Video