[autom.vertaling] Het conflict van de Commissie en van Finland over landbouwbedrijfsubsidies (en)

Finland has lost its battle to make national farm subsidies permanent. Finland's minister of agriculture is worried that this could spell the end of family farms.

Finland's EU accession treaty - which came into force in 1995 - contains a provision that Finland may continue to pay national subsidies to farmers in the southern part of the country. This provision will expire at the end of 2003. The Finnish government wants to make it permanent, but the Commission is willing only to prolong it for four years.

Agriculture Minister Franz Fischler confirmed the Commission decision on Monday during a meeting with Finnish agriculture minister Juha Korkeaoja, according to Helsingin Sanomat.

Sharp disagreement

The parties disagreed sharply. The Commission wants Finland to abolish the subsidies completely, while Finland feels that the subsidies are vital to the future of farming in Southern Finland.

Finland pays €133m to farmers in Southern Finland. Mr Fischler pointed out that Finland could have distributed €34m of EU investment subsidies to these farmers.

Finland wants to maintain family farm structure

But the Finnish government is against investment subsidies because it claims they lead to the wrong kind of investments and makes farmers careless, according to Hufvudstadsbladet. Finland's goverment also fears that investment subsidies might spell the end of the traditional family farm structure in favour of big industrialised agricultural factories.

The Finnish farm subsidies are enjoyed by some 32,000 farmers or about half of all farms in Finland.