Producer organizations receive funding from the budget instead of the European fund

The Ministry of Agriculture has misunderstood, and thus conveyed to the field, that producer organizations cannot simultaneously apply for funds from the Rural Development Fund and Measure 9.

The European Commission has stipulated that agricultural producer organizations can be co-financed from the national budget and the Rural Development Fund for the period 2014 – 2020, but for the third fiscal year in a row, Croatian producer organizations have not received a single cent from the EU fund.

These are producer organizations confirmed by the national Ministry of Agriculture, whose members are various, mostly small agricultural producers, and their establishment was encouraged by the European Commission. Only they can receive funds from the Rural Development Fund, not cooperatives, which can only be members of these organizations. The goal is to become more competitive against large producers, distributors, and retail chains through cooperation, as they have a better negotiating position when united. However, in Croatia, there has been no education or motivation for cooperation, so only a few producer organizations have been established so far, which have, moreover, only burdened the state budget. 

The reason why funds from the Rural Development Fund have not been drawn is, they say in the Ministry of Agriculture, that no producer organization has so far implemented an operational program that would be financed from the Operational Fund for Rural Development. But what about Measure 9, also from the Rural Development Fund, which allocates funds for producer organizations? They do not speak about this in the Ministry. The call for this measure has not even been announced, and we have already entered the third European fiscal year. It seems even worse that, they claim in some producer organizations, the Ministry told them that they cannot simultaneously apply for funds from the Operational Fund and for Measure 9, so they gave up on the operational call waiting for the one for Measure 9, and only recently learned from Brussels officials that this is not true and that they were not understood correctly by the Ministry of Agriculture. 

This was precisely the reason, our sources claim, why the Ministry of Agriculture last year, while the minister was Tihomir Jakovina, paid three producer organizations much more money from the state budget, even though most could have been paid by the EU. Thus, ‘Drava – Sava’ received 635 thousand kuna, ‘Simentalac’ more than 400 thousand kuna, and ‘Gomolava’ received 750 thousand kuna, the amount planned from EU funds. The fourth organization, Zagreb Fruit Growers, did not receive money because, allegedly, they claim in the Ministry, their business plan ‘does not meet the requirements prescribed by the Regulation on the recognition and support for the establishment of producer organizations.’