France must repay EU €1.07bn in agricultural aid claimed through fraud or error

The European Commission has called on France to repay a sum of 1.07 billion euros to the European Union in fraudulent or erroneous agricultural reimbursements to French farmers between 2008 and 2012.

The Tuesday development came as 15 EU nations were demanded to repay farm aid disbursed through fraud, although France was by far the worst hit by the repayment demand, according to figures released by the EU.

France was reportedly penalized for its failure to adequately verify farmers’ claims for subsidies, particularly on environmental issues and calculating the area of arable land.

Paris, however, has managed to reduce the amount from the 1.8 billion euros originally demanded by Brussels, European authorities said.

According to a European source cited in local press reports, the funds, nearly two percent of the 40 billion that France has received from Brussels between 2008 and 2012 under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, is to be repaid by 2017 in three installments.

The Common Agricultural Policy, which accounts for 38 percent of the Brussels budget, has persistently been a subject of debate nearly as long as the bloc has come to existence.

Farming expenditures have traditionally alienated EU nations, with France, Germany, Spain, and Italy among the top beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies.

The repayment demand comes only months after British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed anger at a 2.1-billion-euro bill from Brussels that was based on a recalculation of EU nations’ budgets since a decade ago.

London later stated that it had reduced the bill by one-half and managed to extend the repayment deadline from December 1, 2014 to September 2015.

MFB/HSN/SS

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