I met recently with EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel to discuss the CAP 'health check' and the recently announced plans to publish recipients of EU farm subsidy payments. I asked her why the upcoming register of recipients farm support will be spread across 27 different websites, and why the there will be no obligation to make the different sources of support known to the public. The Commissioner has herself been in the limelight as a recipient of EU farm subsidies says she’s happy with increased transparency.
"It has been a long, and a bit of a rocky road to get the member countries to agree on the decision. We are not all northern Europeans. There has been strong resistance, but finally we could agree that as from April next year all member countries should have their own website for publication. Some have said: Why can’t the Commission do the job, and we would be free from it? And theoretically, we could do that. But the figures are not ours. That’s why we would be hesitant to take the responsibility for the numbers and facts we did not produce ourselves. That was the reason. But in order to put a pressure on the member countries we have made a link on our website to the 15 member countries who have made their data public."
In July 2006 at a public meeting hosted by farmsubsidy.org, Commissioner Fischer Boel said that she was in favour of publishing what different support schemes the individual recipients have got money from. She said, "Telling the public about who gets the money is only half the story. The other half is explaining what the money is for." But this will not be the case with the new registers in 2009, which do not require a scheme-by-scheme breakdown. I asked the Commissioner why not?
"Both the direct support given within Pillar I and the amount someone has received in support of rural development from Pillar II will be known."
I put it to her that there are really many dozens of different support schemes, both within Pillar and within Pillar II.
"Yes, but I hope, and this is something I’m working towards, that we’ll get a model with a regional flat-rate support where there will be no differences in the value of rights to support. Then it will be without importance whether there exist a rest of an old cow tail premium, or whatever. It’s my personal aim that we can get a flat-rate, not within Europe as a whole, but within the regions as we know them."
Back in 2005 Danish media based on data from farmsubsidy.org published the amounts Mariann Fischer Boel and her husband had received in EU-support (around 77 000 €/year).
I asked her how she had reacted to that? Does she believe the citizens has an unconditional right to know how their tax money is being used?
"Yes I do. Of course there will be some recipients of farm support who attract more interest than others. But do you know what? The interest at home lingered for eight days, then it disappeared. You let the hot air out of the balloon by making the making things public. It’s always the things you don’t know, and the things you have to guess, that attracts the biggest interest. I’m fine with transparency and I’m happy that we have come to this decision."
Note: the interview was conducted in Danish and I have translated the Commissioner's comments into English for this article.
