Producers of fruits and vegetables received at the Ministry of Agriculture
with AFP
Bruno Le Maire will have to extinguish the fire that he has lit himself. The new Minister of Agriculture must receive fruit and vegetable producers at 14 h 30 on Tuesday to convince them to repay some of the undue aid they have received between 1992 and 2002. Sums amounting to several hundred million euros.
On Monday, by claiming their reimbursement in Le Parisien, the minister complied with the requirements of the European Commission which considered, in a decision issued in January, that this aid has harmed competition. France had until July 29 to provide a response in Brussels, "otherwise the state would have had to pay" heavy financial penalties, justified Bruno Le Maire.
Brussels estimates that the French government should recover some 500 million euros, but the minister hopes to reduce the bill by challenging part of the count. His predecessor, Michel Barnier, had lodged an appeal to that effect before the European Court of Justice. The question is made more difficult by the fact that many producers have abandoned their business or died.
The profession has already made it known that it refused to pay. "I am already warning the government that if it were to demand the reimbursement of all or part of this envelope (...), indeed the fruit and vegetable producers and other (producers) would be united in order to mobilize, "warns the president of the National Federation of Farmers Unions, Jean-Michel Lemétayer on Europe 1, a few hours before a meeting between representatives of the sector and the Minister of Agriculture Bruno Le Maire. "Producers of fruit and vegetables have not directly received state aid", underlines the FNSEA. The main agricultural union reports a "misunderstanding" with the minister, specifying that the beneficiaries were professional organizations, especially for crisis management programs.
"Brussels aware of the French mechanism" (producers)
Despite the assurances of Bruno Le Maire to "spread things over time" and "to examine the reimbursement files on a case-by-case basis", this announcement indeed comes at the worst time for a sector struggling with serious difficulties . Producers have stepped up in recent days to denounce their "distressing situation" due to the fall in the prices of fruit and vegetables. "If there is an emergency, it is good to help producers who are going through a new catastrophic crisis," protests Jean-Michel Lemétayer.
"No one will reimburse these subsidies. We do not have the means, except to bleed and wipe out two-thirds of the sector", adds François Lafitte, president of the Federation of Economic Committees (Fédécom) which represents professional organizations of producers who received this aid. He accuses the State of having put itself in an "illegal situation" by failing to notify this aid to the Commission, an "omission" which "turns against the State, but also against the producers, who are not not responsible ". According to him, Brussels "was fully aware of the French mechanism" and let it happen "so as not to set the countryside on fire", while the sector has been shrinking for several decades.
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