Since Slovakia’s recovery plan, which was presented Monday, failed to set anything aside for the agriculture sector or landscaping reforms, Agriculture Minister Jan Micovsky has announced that he will be forced to resign unless this is addressed.
The national recovery and resilience plan, with a €6 billion budget was presented to the public by Finance Minister Eduard Heger on Monday. It reveals that agriculture and food are not among the priorities of the current Slovak government.
While the original plan in December saw a large sum going to landscaping, the latest version, finally available to the public, has set nothing aside for agriculture, compared to other EU countries.
The responsible ministry has stated that the national recovery plan is still awaiting approval of the government, however, not much time is left for it to be finalised, as it is being presented to the European Commission in April.
Micovsky said he had submitted several documents to the finance ministry, asking for money for water retention measures and irrigation systems, which are in high demand among farmers. The minister also said he had proposed to include procedures for sustainable forest management, or a long-awaited risk fund, which would compensate farmers for crop damage caused by weather fluctuations.
However, none of these appeared in the current version of the national plan.
Several EU countries want to use pandemic money to invest in the climate change sector and Romania, Italy, Hungary and Greece want to invest in the improvement of their agricultural water management systems with their budget. The EU demands that 37% of the national allowance be allocated to green projects.
*first published in: www.euractiv.com
By: N. Peter Kramer
