Peter Magyar's MEP Again Argues Against Current Support for Farmers

Gabriella Gerzsenyi used to work in the Brussels bureaucracy and is against the Hungary's utility bill cuts program. Now as an MEP, just like her party leader Peter Magyar, she has argued in the Agriculture Committee against the current area-based subsidies for Hungarian farmers. MEP Peter Magyar has again been absent from his job.

Hungarian opposition Tisza Party MEP Gabriella Gerzsenyi (Photo: MTI/Tamas Purger)

Despite his earlier pledges, MEP Peter Magyar again did not attend Monday's meeting of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee. But Gabriella Gerzsenyi, another Tisza Party MEP, was present and made some harsh criticisms of Hungarian farmers in the context of a report.

Gerzsenyi criticized the cultivation practices of Hungarian farmers and, as Peter Magyar had lambasted earlier, the intensive large-scale farming techniques used.

"The reason for the decline is often mistrust in new methods or a preference for less efficient practices in order to participate in EU programs. We therefore believe that the criteria for agricultural subsidies should be revised to give priority and greater support to practices with greater impact."

This is not the first time that Hungary's opposition Tisza Party has spoken out in favor of reducing the current area-based support system for Hungarian farmers. Party leader Peter Magyar wrote earlier: "in Hungary, as in the EU as a whole, more intensive, higher added-value, organic agricultural production should be promoted, instead of the current extensive cereal production (sic!)."

So, according to the liberal politician, organic farming should be supported instead of grain production. In the same post, he also pitted other farmers against each other. It seems from what he said that gardeners are worth more to him than crop farmers.

Hungary receives HUF 550 billion (about EUR 1.3 billion) a year in the form of area-based payments. Every year, more than 160,000 farmers operating on almost five million hectares in the country apply for support, the vast majority of them family farmers. Smaller farms receive proportionally increased additional support, with an extra HUF 32,000 (about EUR 77) per hectare for the first ten hectares and HUF 17,000 (about EUR 41) per hectare up to 150 hectares.

The Hungarian government supports crop and organic farmers as well as livestock farmers. The abolition of area payments is strongly backed by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who, during her recent speech, received a standing ovation from Peter Magyar, as well. The change is explicitly mentioned in the report, among the proposals drawn up by the team of experts she has entrusted.

It is particularly interesting that in the report the justification for the abolition of area-based payments is the need to prepare agricultural subsidies for EU enlargement. Although Ukraine is not explicitly mentioned in the document, it is obvious which country the advisers to the president of the Commission had in mind. After all, Ukraine's agricultural area is 40 million hectares, while currently in the EU a total of 150 million hectares receive subsidies.

With Gerzsenyi's speech, it is becoming a recurring practice in Brussels for Tisza Party MEPs to use financial means to put pressure on Hungarian farmers, by criticizing the current system of area-based subsidies.

Cover photo: Hungarian opposition Tisza Party MEP Gabriella Gerzsenyi (Photo: MTI/Tamas Purger)