Brussels would sacrifice Hungary’s agricultural subsidies for Ukraine’s EU membership, says Orbán cabinet

The European Union’s policy ignoring the situation and interests of farmers “has been turbo charged”: the EU “wants to submit the Common Agricultural Policy after 2027 to Ukraine’s accession”, Fidesz MEP Csaba Dömötör said in Brussels on Wednesday.

Speaking to Hungarian journalists, Dömötör said “a series of documents and statements prove” that Brussels wanted to curb CAP “to make way for future expenses for Ukraine’s accession.”

“The first victim” is expected to be the area-based support system, “a source of income for 150,000 farmers and their families in Hungary alone,” he said. Agriculture funding would be merged with other funds to mask the loss of funding, he said.

The “fast-tracked accession of Ukraine would add some 40 million hectares of farmland to the EU, most of it in the hands of western European and transatlantic corporations, Dömötör said.

The European Union decided to open its market before Ukraine in 2022, significantly harming eastern European farmers, he said.

According to the Farm Europe organisation, at least 70 materials are used in Ukrainian pesticides that are banned in the EU, he said. The EP has said clearly that the current regulations would cut farming subsidies by at least 20 percent, he added.

Meanwhile, European farmers still have no information on the degree to which the European Commission would open the markets in June, he said. “So consequences could appear within weeks, rather than with years,” he added.

“The Brussels party of Peter Magyar”, the European People’s Party, is the figurehead of the drive to dismantle the EU agricultural funding system, he said.

“The founding fathers of the European Union knew very well that the Common Agricultural Policy was not only about farmers, but also our traditions, respect for rural life and the daily bread in villages and cities. We will work to bring that approach back…” Dömötör said.

More than 1.2 million sign petition on Ukraine’s EU accession

More than 1.2 million people have already returned the questionnaire on Ukraine’s potential EU membership which would have an impact on the lives of all Europeans as well as the continent’s future, Fidesz MEP Csaba Dömötör told a forum in Zalaegerszeg on Monday. Addressing the latest leg of Fidesz party’s national tour, the MEP said fast-tracking Ukraine into the EU would “devastate the already struggling European economy”.

He said Brussels was treating it as a foregone conclusion that all accession chapters would be opened this year, aiming for Ukraine to achieve full membership by 2030. Rather than taking the candidate’s merits into account, “the Brussels elite believes its diktat must be accepted”, he added.

Cohesion funds and agricultural subsidies for Hungary, he said, would be reduced drastically and markets, including in agriculture, may even open before full membership, with “severe consequences” and big losses for Hungarian farmers, Dömötör said.

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