Race against time to keep accession farm aid on track

Date: 26/07/01

APPLICANT states are in danger of losing funding allocated under the EU's farm aid programme worth h529 million a year because the scheme is falling chronically behind schedule.

The Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) was supposed to run from 2000 to 2006, but so far only Bulgaria and Estonia have received any money, according to a European Commission report.

Slovakia, Romania and Hungary will not even have their agencies for distributing the funds in place before the beginning of 2002, said one official.

The delays could be a major headache because the deadline for spending the 2000 budget comes at the end of 2002.

Commission insiders say some countries are likely to find it difficult or impossible to allocate the cash by then. Poland, for example, has a h171.6-million budget for 2000, but Wladyslaw Piskorz, an official at the country's EU mission, said the money might not start flowing until mid-October.

SAPARD was set up to help candidate countries reform their agricultural sector and modernise rural areas in preparation for implementation of Union law and the Common Agricultural Policy when they join.

Applicant countries fear the problems could have ramifications for accession talks on agriculture, widely regarded as one of, if not the, most difficult subjects of the enlargement process.

They are concerned the poor start will give the Union an excuse to avoid making direct payments to their farmers upon, or soon after, accession.

To help prevent central and eastern European countries from losing out, Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler is proposing to extend the deadline for spending the 2000 money by one year.

But he is blaming the applicants for slow implementation. "It is progress made in the candidate countries which determines when EU SAPARD money can start flowing," he says.

The applicants though say the Union executive is not without blame. One Polish diplomat criticised the difficult criteria and administrative procedures set by the Commission, saying they had made the whole process "complicated and costly".

Applicant states are in danger of losing funding allocated under the EU's farm aid programme worth €529 million a year because the scheme is falling chronically behind schedule. The Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD) was supposed to run from 2000 to 2006, but so far only Bulgaria and Estonia have received any money, according to a European Commission report.