Just a week before the announced farmers’ payments, OPEKEPE and the Ministry of Rural Development and Food are in complete confusion and disorganization. An irrefutable witness is the fact that for the Ecological Schemes, which concern most of the payments (€425 million), OPEKEPE changes the relevant payment circular at the last minute.
It is not long ago that Mr. Avgenakis, when appointing to OPEKEPE his political friends from his tenure at the Ministry of Sports, declared that “the Organization will function properly again” and “the relationship of trust it had with the farmers will be restored”.
Unfortunately, the proper functioning of OPEKEPE after five years of government by the ND is still in demand, while the aid payments for most farmers have become a lottery with an unknown draw date.
The regularity of aid payments and the proper operation of OPEKEPE is a basic condition for the sustainability of our agricultural sector. For this to happen it is necessary to defeat the government of arrogance, sloppiness and irrelevance in the upcoming elections in June.
