Covid-19 EC measures

  The European Commission (EC) has developed a plan of measures to contribute to the support of sectors that face the imbalances of Covid-19. Among the measures that were announced, there are some agricultural funds to combat the health crisis in rural areas, with this they want to benefit the agro-food sector with loans or guarantees with favorable conditions such as low interest rates and flexible payments. In this sense, the EC has also proposed reducing the number of people on the farm, extending the deadline for requesting payments, and increasing advances on payments from mid-October. The criticisms of this initiative by the EC have been quick to appear, Cooperatives in the agro-food sector in Spain have considered the measures presented by the EC as “scarce”. This plan, according to the aforementioned cooperatives, is not up to the current health crisis. In this sense, the organizations describe the action of the EC as “timid” and believe that in the face of this situation, the action of each member state of the European Union is being limited so that it can resolve its own situation. The budget for this package of measures is approximately 88 million euros.