EC cuts back aid to biofuel crop growers

Thu 18 October 2007 View all news

The European Commission has announced that a farm aid scheme introduced in 2003 and aimed at developing Europe's energy crop sector will be scaled back after it transpired that farmers have already overshot the eligible two million hectare target.

Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, explained the reasons for reducing the funding: "This payment has been very useful in stimulating the European biofuels sector. But when we come to the health check of the Common Agricultural Policy next month, we will have to ask whether it is still necessary. We now have a binding target for biofuels and a blossoming marketplace.'"

EU Member States submitted figures which indicate that applications for this type of aid have risen to approximately 2.84 million hectares in 2007 partly due to the inclusion for the first time of the accession states in the scheme and to its recent simplification.

The move towards biofuels has been blamed in some quarters for stretching the EU's land resources and of causing price increases of some foodstuffs. However, the Commission insists that its biofuels policy will only put limited pressure on agricultural markets.

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