Report: Hungaryʼs Ministry of Agriculture closes loophole

Hungary’s Ministry of Agriculture is reportedly closing a loophole that big land owners use to get around an exclusion from European Union farmland subsidies, Hungarian economic daily Napi Gazdaság said today.

According to the paper, although, owners of farmland larger than 1,200 hectares are not eligible for the EU’s single area subsidies, they have still been collecting them by “artificially” dividing their properties to push each under the threshold.

The farm ministry has transposed a 2013 EU directive into national law that sanctions such divisions of land holdings, the paper said, adding that the regulations, in force retroactively from 2011, will prevent landowners who are ineligible for the subsidies from collecting them in such a manner.

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