Agriculture, Prandini: «Crucial response from the EU to Italy on state aid»

Listen to the audio version of the article

«Responses to the farmers’ requests have arrived from Brussels. The street demonstrations were important. But be careful: the protests have accelerated the decisions but the solutions did not come from the streets but from the work and the discussion set up in recent months with the institutions and other governments”. The president of Coldiretti Ettore Prandini is convinced of this and, more than two months following the first protest demonstrations, draws up an initial assessment of the responses implemented by Brussels. «The battle led by Prime Minister Meloni for the revision of the restrictions on state aid was fundamental – added Prandini. We were the first to ask for the upward revision of the previous ceilings and the use of this measure also for the debt moratorium of agricultural businesses. Having achieved these results was a decisive contribution to alleviating farmers’ difficulties. With the previous constraints there was, among other things, a paradoxical short circuit: in the case of damage from bad weather more than once we found ourselves with resources and compensation allocated by the Government but which might not be collected by companies because the ceiling on state aid had already been achieved”.

Responses also arrived on the CAP, on fertilizers and on packaging.

Italian MEPs have worked across sides, protecting the interests of our country or trying to limit the impact of EU decisions that might have been penalising. For example, in the packaging dossier it was possible to recover part of the investments made by our country in recycling and which risked being wasted. We obtained the reopening of the chapter on fertilizers and greater flexibility on emissions.

Responses have also been received regarding the simplification of the CAP.

The strong bureaucratic simplification for the 500 thousand Italian companies with less than 10 hectares of surface area is significant. And a halving of bureaucracy will also happen for the largest ones.