Summary of newsmakers of the previous day – 26.2.2007

A new economic deputy minister of agriculture is Ivo Vrzal

The Minister of Agriculture Petr Gandalovič nominated to a post of deputy minister for economics and administration Ing. Mgr.Ivo Vrzal, MBA today. The new deputy minister will change Ing. Karel Venera, who has worked in this office since October 2000. The deputy minister Vrzal will, the same as his predecessor, answer for agendas of economics and financing of resort, research and education, information and communication technologies, internal administration and financing of common agricultural policy of the European Union. In the resort of agriculture the deputy minister Ivo Vrzal (40) will apply his general professional training which he achieved at the Faculty of Economics, University of Agriculture in Brno, at the Faculty of Law, the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, at the University of Economics in Prague, and at Prague International Business School.

European Parliament refused again shortening of payments in agriculture

The European Parliament refused again the European Commission’s proposal for a voluntary differentiation the direct payments in agriculture, which Euro-representatives didn’t pass already last year in November. The Parliament called again on the European Commission so that it would take back the proposed new rules. The Commission suggested that EU member states could shorten all direct payments as much as by 20 %. En exception should be small receivers who will obtain less than 5000 EUR yearly in direct payments. Most of representatives see in that “renationalization” of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). 572 representatives voted for the suggestion of reporter Lutze Goepel (EPP-ED, DE), so that the Parliament would refuse again the Commission’s proposal, 65 were against and 16 retrained from the voting.

European Commission asks other limitation in sugar production

EU member states and the European Commission have agreed on further reduction of sugar production to prevent overproduction and with it connected price collapse. Since June last year a reform has run which aims to limit the sugar market by six million tons during four years. A compensation for a ton of finished production should be 730 EUR in first two years. A new proposal about which the Commission voted on Thursday, the 22nd of February is aimed to reduce the sugar production by two million tons between the years 2007-2008, which represents 13,5 % of the total production. However, this volume doesn’t refer to all member states without difference. The European Commission has come to an opinion that it is necessary to appreciate the states which reduced voluntarily its production below the determined rate. Therefore countries which have already reduced the sugar production by more than 50 % (e.g. Greece and Portugal) will be able to produce the same volume in the future.

Council of the EU supported Hungarian ban of GM corn of firm MONSANTO

According to the daily Financial Times, only four from 27 ministers of environment in the EU expressed themselves for cancellation of Hungarian ban of growing GM corn MON 810 of the firm MOSANTO at a recent meeting of the EU Council. The European Commission suffered in short time already the third political failure in the affairs of regulation of commercial growing of genetically modified crops. Already for the three times the European Commission tried to unsuccessfully to cancel the veto of growing GMO imposed by some of the EU member states.