Are We Ready for EU Funds?

By: Bozidar Pankretic

Are we ready for EU funds ? 

Back in 2002, the Strategy of Agriculture and Fiching set the vision of development of Croatian agriculture, formed into long-term sector strategic goals of development, from boosting the competitiveness of primary agriculture, manufacture and sale of agricultural products to reaching sustainable rural development and others.  

 There are no elaborated concrete measures

However, a comprehensive action plan with elaborated concrete measures have not been drawn up, but rather an Agriculture and Rural Development Plan 2005-2006 that was rubberstamped by the European Commission, which determines long-term strategic goals of the branch. The SAPARD programme is a special, all-round programme for agriculture and rural development that prepares countries for the implementation of a joint agricultural policy. In 2006, the Republic of Croatia has the opportunity to use EUR25 million in the name of the SAPARD programme. Last week, the Croatian parliament adopted a Law on Confirming the Annual Agreement on Financing for 2006. The law creates normative grounds for the usage of funds of the said programme in 2006.

 Are we at all prepared for SAPARD?

However, one should ask whether we are ready and sufficiently prepared for SAPARD. It would be good that, apart from this normative background and elaboration that this programme has, we have that other thing that is necessary for creating a serious agricultural policy. That would, primarily, be the complete implementation of the basic laws in agriculture, laws whose passing marked the start of reform in Croatian agriculture. Had the Law on Agriculture been implemented, if Croatia had a law regulating criteria for the establishment of agricultural regions with agricultural products that are competitive in a certain region, had we had several years before reports on the situation in agriculture (Green Report), had the Law on Agricultural Land been implemented, there would be no fear of whether and how Croatian agriculture would be using resources from the SAPARD programme.   

Concretely, as far as spending the funds from the SAPARD programme is concerned, we saw that the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Water Management had on July 20, 2006 published a tender for the allocation of funds ffrom the SAPARD programme for Measure 1 and Measure 2 – investment into agricultural businesses and the promotion of the manufacturinf and sale of agricultural and fishing products.

Good producers hindered by bureaucracy

From the tender, only several projects were accepted for both measures in the total value of only 12,600,000 kuna. We do not believe that this amount can be sufficient, significant. In Croatian agriculture we have good producers with good projects, but for various complications, they cannot reach to these resources. God forbid that the visions and ideas stated in the Agriculture and Rural Development Plan 2005-2006 stay at that level because we do not know how to implement them, with the resources unused.

We hope that the validity of the current tender for our farmers will be extended to 2007 and 2008, that they will be able to compete for resources even after the Agreement is ratified, so that there is no ‘short circuit in signing , to the detriment of our agriculture, our agricultural producer, the peasant!!