French producers’ leaders have had assurances this week from their minister of agriculture that growers will not have to pay back some €330 million (£280m) in aid plus interest granted to them between 1992 and 2002.
Producers had been incensed by the demands made by the European Commission, which had deemed the subsidies illegal.
The sum in dispute has been estimated at €500m when interest is added. France had been due to reimburse the money paid out in state aid over the 10-year period by July 29 because the commission said it had distorted the market in the way it doled out the cash to cope with crises in the fruit and vegetable sector.
But yesterday growers’ leaders met with Bruno Le Maire, agriculture minister, in an emergency session.
Bruno Dupont, president of the national fruit growers’ federation FNPF, was at the meeting and told freshinfo: “We are relieved because the minister confirmed to us yesterday that it won’t be up to producers to pay back the money. Some of these payments were made almost 20 years ago and were authorised by the European Community and now they are being called into question. I think it is because the commission is doing a bit of tidying up in advance of the 2013 Common Agricultural Policy reform. But it is out of the question for growers to pay any money back. Unfortunately, many of the growers from the period are no longer in production and some of the structures that received the payments no longer exist. With the crisis that growers in France are suffering it is out of the question for producers to repay this money.”
At the meeting yesterday Le Maire said that an in-depth assessment would be carried out to determine who had received aid and whether or not it was legal and that he would then negotiate with the EU as he believed the €500m figure to be “overvalued”.
