Summary of newsmakers of the previous day - 14. 02. 2007

EP refused again proposal of EC for voluntary reduction of money for farmers

The European Parliament refused again a proposal of the European Commission for a voluntary differentiation of direct payments in agriculture. The Commission suggested so that the EU member states would shorten all direct payments as much as by 20 percents. An exception should be small receivers who will obtain in direct payments less than 5000 Euros (about 141 000 crowns) yearly. Representatives refused the proposal already last year in November and today the Parliament called upon EC again to take back the proposed new rules. According to the web site of European Parliament 572 representatives voted for rejection of the Commission’s proposal, 65 were against and 16 forbore of voting. Decision on further procedure is now up to the Commission and the EU Council which called upon the Commission to put forward a proposal in December 2005.

Holický named new management of Lesy CR

The State enterprise Lesy of the Czech Republic has already known its top management. The general manager Ji˙í Holický, who were charged of managing the enterprise last week after a resignation of a former management, announced new names today. Holický named Miluše Kade˙ávková as an economic manager; Vladimír Dolejský as a production-technical manager; Bohumil Kos became a business manager and Vladimír ˙ihák is now a manager for strategy and marketing. The Ministry of Agriculture will open a public selective proceeding for a position of the general manager of LCR.

Bee-keepers: Reputation of Czech honey suffers due to non-quality import

Czech bee-keepers are not satisfied with a quality of imported honey in business network. According to their researches only each sixth honey imported in the CR from the world fulfills qualitative norms while Czech honeys passed the test without the only exception. However, at purchase they do not distinguish a country of origin a so a sale non-quality honey casts reflections on domestic bee-keepers. Moreover, as the chairman of Czech Beekeepers Union Lud˙k Sojka said to ˙TK, people’s interest in honey decreases generally. Representatives of the Beekeepers Union asked for help the shadow minister of Agriculture Michal Hašek (˙SSD) in the end. He wants to have audit whether the State Veterinary Administration (SVA) and the State Agricultural and Food Inspection (SAFI) use all possibilities to inflict import of non-quality goods.

Government will support “bespeaks*”

Retirement at age of 55 years and then to live from a state rate. The very same thing the government prepares for private farmers. “It is supposed that it will be possible to deliver application for this support during the second half of this year”, a spokeswoman of the Ministry of Agriculture Tá˙a Králová reported to Deník. Farmers have already asked for a support from a program of preterm termination of agricultural activity. This subsidy title will continue also in a new Program of Rural Development in a period 2007-2013, however, now it is approved by the European Commission. New rules of allotment of the support should be decided on by a monitoring committee for the European Agricultural Fund at the ministry.

*bespeak = derived from a verb bespeak; a condition of which old parents handed over their farm to their children

Source: Agris, 15.02.2007