Lies Instead Of Fertilizers

Cătălin Deacu

The European Commission has received no application for subsidies for chemical fertilizers from the Romanian authorities, according to an official EC document in our possession. The document is signed by Director General Jean-Luc Demarty and was addressed to CNS Cartel ALFA in response to their formal request. CNS Cartel ALFA is a confederation of chemical and petrochemical trade unions.

It appears that the statements made by Government officials and especially by Agriculture Ministry officials early this year indicating that "everything that could be done has been done" were nothing but statements. The Government initially promised farmers a subsidy of 400 RON for fertilizers and then reduced it to 360 RON.

The subsidy was intended to prevent the collapse of both the chemical fertilizer industry (i.e. the chemical fertilizer plants are strongly affected by the crisis and cannot sell their production because most farmers are impoverished, so thousands of workers are facing unemployment) and the crops (i.e. for which the crop per hectare indicator is quite low compared to Western countries). As nothing happened, Romanian officials blamed the European Commission claiming that they had labeled the subsidy as "State aid" and therefore rejected it for being incompatible with the principles of the Common Market.

It all turned out to be completely false, as the Romanian authorities did not even address the European Commission on this subject.

In fact, the subsidy for chemical fertilizers used for farming was doomed to fail from the very beginning, as it was incompatible with European Commission regulations. Director General Jean-Luc Demarty confirmed this fact in the aforementioned document, warning that such type of aid was incompatible with the principles of the Common Market and a violation of competition rules, no matter what the context was.

In the same document, Demarty also indicated the only viable solution to subsidize fertilizers purchased by farmers: "If the Romanian Government wishes to offer such kind of aid, the only possible solution is to use the amount left from the de minimis aid defined for Romania through European Commission Directive no. 1539/2007 (98.68 million EUR) and offer such aid within the limits defined per beneficiary in the same Directive - 7,500 EUR over three accounting years."

Michael Mann, Spokesman for the European Commissioner for Agriculture Mariann Fischer Boel, agrees with Director General Jean-Luc Demarty. He recently told BURSA that this form of aid was incompatible with the principles of the Common Market and suggested that the only solution was to use the de minimis aid.

The Romanian authorities stated loud and clear that Brussels was rejecting the proposal, but never mentioned that they had not asked the Commission for their point of view.

The fact that the Government promised such aid to the farmers and, indirectly, to the thousands of employees in the chemical industry is a lie to the industry and the agriculture, the two pillars of the national economy.

If the Government had not known that the aid was incompatible with the Common Market, they could have been accused of incompetence and superficiality. However, as they accused the Commission of not allowing this aid (so the promise was fully knowledgeable), but in fact took no official step in this respect, the Government can only be accused of lying.

Without subsidies for the chemical fertilizers while the economic crisis is climaxing, thousands of workers will be laid off by the chemical plants, putting more and more pressure on the unemployment budget.

As the agricultural output is estimated to decrease by 40%, the price of farming products will increase.

And that will put more and more pressure on our pockets.

And that will be visible when the time comes to go to vote...