Highly awaited meeting between minister and farmers [updated]

Highly awaited meeting between minister and farmers [updated]

The Agriculture Minister Gabriela Matečná was supposed to meet with the farmers from all Slovakia on Thursday morning in the town of Košice, eastern Slovakia. However, the morning part of the meeting was cancelled late on Wednesday by the Ministry, the independent Denník N daily informed on Thursday afternoon. During the morning part of the event, farmers were supposed to meet the representatives of state individually. Represented by Patrik Magdoško, farmers reacted in an e-mail on Monday requiring that all the invited farmers be present to make the meeting more transparent. The Ministry replied only on Wednesday afternoon stating that due to the fact that their requirements are impossible to be fulfilled they cancelled the morning meetings. In the afternoon the more general meeting of all invited farmers with the Minister took place only, lasting more than 4 hours.

The main topic of the meeting was land rental, property-law relations and subsidies. Its aim was to seek solutions to problems disclosed by the Slovak media during a professional discussion with representatives of the entire agricultural community, particularly the leasing and management of agricultural land.

Originally, the meeting should have been held on April 12, but the ministry postponed it by two weeks at the request of farmers. At first, they welcomed the invitation announced on April 6 when Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini also called on farmers to take part in the meeting with the Minister of Agriculture. However, the following Monday, April 9, only 4 farmers received an invitation from the Ministry. “It is a problem which affects the whole country. It’s not only about a few individual farmers. Therefore we cannot accept such an invitation, where only a very small group of farmers chosen by the Ministry would be present,” said farmer Jaroslav Jánoš.

Thursday’s meeting is also a reaction to farmers’ protests against the misuse of EU agricultural funds. In his article published by the independent daily Denník N, journalist Andrej Bán pointed to frauds in farm subsidies in which the largest coalition party Smer-SD's former district chief Ľubica Rošková was allegedly involved. Rošková's firm has reportedly received farm subsidies for plots of land it neither owns, nor cultivates. The firm allegedly obtained €40,000 from EU funds for 2017. In the meantime, the European Anti-fraud Office launched an investigation into the alleged misuse of EU funds in Slovakia that was uncovered by murdered Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak. He was also writing about alleged links between the Italian mafia and the Slovak government, including ex-Prime Minister Robert Fico who resigned after mass protests held in many Slovak towns following the murder of Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová at the end of February.

Ina Sečíková, Photo: TASR

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