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Minister of Agriculture Florin Barbu and his French counterpart Marc Fesneau met on Monday in the runup to the meeting of the EU Agriculture and Fisheries Council (Agrifish) in Luxembourg, with the two discussing support measures for farmers. Florin Barbu conveyed that he will use all the levers at his disposal to support agricultural workers.
In Luxembourg, before the AgriFish Council meeting, I answered the invitation of my French counterpart Marc Fesneau to discuss support measures for our farmers. We talked about the difficulties experienced by Romanian farmers due to the drought and to pressure on transport caused by the transit of Ukrainian grain. It's crucial that farmers receive support for grain transport from the EU crisis fund, as we requested at the beginning of September," Barbu wrote on Facebook.
He also emphasized that he and the French Minister of Agriculture agreed to support before the Commission the extension to 2024 of derogations from the GAEC 7 (crop rotation) and GAEC 8 (maintenance of non-productive areas) requirements, in order to allow farmers to compensate for the losses caused by the reduction in grain prices and the severe drought.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Florin-Ionut Barbu participates between October 23 - 24 in the Agriculture and Fisheries Council meeting taking place in Luxembourg, the relevant ministry informed in a release.
The agenda of the meeting includes topics of major interest for Romanian farmers, such as: the market situation amid the Ukraine war, the Waste Framework Directive, food-related issues, 2024 fishing possibilities in the Baltic Sea, the annual meeting of the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT).
The European officials will seek to reach a political agreement on fishing possibilities for next year in the Baltic Sea.
Member state representatives will exchange views that will provide guidelines to the Commission regarding the position to be adopted by the EU at this year's annual ICCAT meeting which is will take place between November 13 - 20.
The Czech delegation will brief the Council on the meeting of the Visegrad Group, while the delegations from Croatia and Slovenia will inform on crisis management, and the Lithuanian delegation will present the outlooks of ecological agriculture.
In a public session, the presidency will update the Council on the agricultural and forestry aspects of the proposal regarding the certification of carbon dioxide emissions. At the same session, the Polish delegation will brief the ministers on the impact of the EU emissions trading system on the agricultural sector, while the Austrian delegation will inform the Council on the challenges faced by the agricultural sector.
