The “sieve” for the ecological schemes is ready, the first installment will be a surprise to those connected until Friday evening

The latest information wants the political leadership of the Ministry of Rural Development to persistently request the completion of payments by Tuesday, April 30, without going into more details about it.

On the other hand, the dance of the “technical consultants” holds up well, with what this may mean for the realization of the credits.

The latest news wants the political leadership of the Ministry of Rural Development to have given the basic guidelines on how to align the more than double demands from the eco-schemes with the available fund of 425 million euros. In fact, within the day (Thursday, April 25) an update is expected from the OPEKEPE staff on what the various scenarios yield based on the ministry’s guidelines.

More specifically, according to his information Agronewsthe directors say among other things:

• There should be no cuts to individual actions that require significant costs for the producer, such as Confucius and stabilized fertilizers
• Priority should be given to actions with a clear pro-environmental footprint, such as e.g. the terraces on the islands
• Those who have applied for more should automatically be excluded from aid
  from 3 greening actions (eco-schemes)
• There should be a serious “correction” of the aid for conservation in organic farming, where the biggest financial gap is observed
• There should be a horizontal reduction adjusted to the available amount for all other categories of aid applications

Based on the above, the money that the producers will see in their accounts for the new type of greening, i.e. for the eco-farms, will be much less than what the researchers promised them until a while ago and for which some of them they have also made a similar withholding.

Finally, at the time of writing, it is doubtful whether some of the linked aid payments will be paid by Friday evening, so that the relevant credit (cotton, durum, rice, industrial tomato and seeds) will be completed by the Great Monday.

The interesting thing is that the political leadership of the Ministry of Rural Development has no intention of condoning a delay of the total payments of 700 million euros beyond Holy Tuesday and everyone seems to be aligned on this, regardless of the agenda of each of those involved.