The president of the Senate, Nicolae Ciuca, states that the payments through APIA [Agency for Payment and Interventions in Agriculture - editor's note], requested as a result of the requests submitted for harvesting reed in the Danube Delta, will not be executed if all the rules are not met.
"I know that all these measures have not been approved, no payments are made for such an approach, not only because the European Public Prosecutor's Office intervened. There are certain rules based on which payments are made through APIA for such an activity and as long as those rules are not fulfilled, those payments will not be made (...) My understanding is that we must focus on the real and true problems of the farmers," Ciuca said on Monday.
On Monday, the Agriculture Committee of the Senate gave a favourable report to the legislative proposal of the USR [Save Romania Union - editor's note] to repeal some provisions of the Emergency Ordinance no. 34/2013 by which marshy lands and reedbeds were included in the category of meadows.
Minister of Agriculture Florin Barbu ordered that the Control Body carry out an investigation in order to verify the legality of the granting of subsidies for reed harvesting in the Danube Delta, considering the information that appeared in the public space regarding the way of granting this new type of subsidies.
According to a Ministry Agriculture's press release of January 19, Barbu requested that the control team also include anti-fraud inspectors.