The European Agriculture and Fisheries Council met is Brussels on 15 December 2014.

At the meeting, Minister of State for State-Owned Lands Dr. Márton Bitay, who led the Hungarian delegation, told the Council that the extreme weather conditions of recent weeks had caused extensive damage to Hungary’s forests and stressed that forest managers are working together with the relative state organisations to mitigate the damage.

The Minister of State emphasised that once the forest damage is fully assessed, Hungary plans to make use of all available funding to restore the damage caused by the extreme weather.

Reacting to the Hungarian report, EU Commissioner for Agriculture Phil Hogan mentioned the possibility of applying national funding in addition to EU rural development funding.

The Council discussed several points of order that are related to the Russian import ban.

Some member states argued in favour of extending the Commission’s measures in relation to the fruit and vegetable sector, while Poland requested that in addition to providing funding for the withdrawal of the large volumes of apples that had become stuck within the internal market, the Commission should develop a compensation mechanism to mitigate lost income suffered by producers.

Acting together, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, France, Romania, Poland and Hungary asked the Commission to introduce temporary measures to promote private storage in view of the pig sector situation, which could be a suitable way of handling surpluses.

Minister of State Bitay stressed that Hungary broadly supports all market measures that serve to reduce the internal market surpluses caused by the embargo.

(Ministry of Agriculture)