“The prime minister has exhausted all the country’s fiscal margins in order to satisfy the demands of our farmers to the greatest extent possible,” said the Deputy Minister of Rural Development Stavros Keletsisin his intervention during the debate in the Plenary of the draft law on “Strengthening standard animal husbandry, fisheries and aquaculture regulations, provisions on phytosanitary, biocidal products and food quality and other provisions to stimulate rural development” .

The deputy minister, referring to the meeting of the prime minister with the representatives of the farmers at the Maximos Palace, said that “it has been completed and it is evident that the government and the prime minister, for their part, have exhausted all the country’s fiscal margins in order to satisfy the requests to the greatest extent possible of our farmers”. These are, he said, “measures that have to do, mainly, with the cost of production which is one of the structural problems of the Greek and European, in general, agricultural economy”.

“I think it is now the farmers’ turn to responsibly evaluate the datathe proposals and measures announced by the prime minister, as well as the country’s fiscal capabilities and to return to normalcy in terms of the operation of our rural economy” said Mr. Keletsis.

The deputy minister observed that “the structural problems of the rural economy are not only related to some, possibly, benefits that one would consider temporarily satisfying any economic and productive group”. As he said, especially the problems of the rural economy have to do with problems concerning the cost (fuel, energy, supplies), the prices received by producers, the new CAP, which makes it difficult for Greek agriculture, and as we have announced, we are working towards a smoother transition to the new period, so that farmers do not have to pay for it.

Mr. Keletsis underlined that the issue is not that there should be temporary ones meters for oil and electricity. This is certainly the case, but what the agricultural economy needs are: agricultural infrastructure projects (regeneration, land improvement and irrigation projects), rural road construction, grazing management plans, livestock parks, agro-photovoltaics, the exploitation of biomass, the utilization of agricultural land.

The reduction of production costs, said Mr. Keletsis, “has to do with the organization in groups of producers, in new cooperatives, in interprofessional associations. In other words, let’s go for economies of scale and an increase in the bargaining power of our farmers.”

On these structural problems, the deputy minister said, “we work every day in the ministry, because any provision is not enough to satisfy certain requests, but good planning is needed, taking into account the new data and the climate crisis” and added that this is also done with the present draft law.

The deputy minister rejected the criticism that the bill is austerity with piecemeal provisions, saying that these characterizations do it no justice, as there are regulations concerning the structural problems of our rural economy.

Analyzing the articles of the draft law, Mr. Keletsis said that this “constitutes a good start to begin the redesign to move our rural economy forward.”