Members of the EP Committee on Budgetary Control (CONT) meet in the European Parliament in Brussels to discuss the top 50 beneficiaries in each member state of the common agricultural policy (CAP) and cohesion funds. The researcher coordinating the study on “The Largest 50 beneficiaries in each EU Member State of CAP and Cohesion Funds” presented the findings. Statement by Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), rapporteur.

Brussels

statement

meeting

Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development

CAP reform (T)

HOHLMEIER, Monika (EPP, DE)

Top 50 beneficiaries in each member state of CAP and cohesion funds in CONT committee: statement by Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), rapporteur

Title: Top 50 beneficiaries in each member state of CAP and cohesion funds in CONT committee: statement by Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), rapporteur

SOUNDBITE (English), Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, One of the biggest beneficiaries is Agrofert, where the owner by trust funds is in person, Andrej Babis, he is partly owner. Secondly, we have other big beneficiaries, so we will check this and analyse this very, very clearly. But what we really revealed with this study is that there are huge gaps of transparency. It is very complicated to find out who is the beneficiary, it is really not possible to aggregate the data, to compare the data.

SOUNDBITE (English), Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, I really believe that the most important is that we have to receive an interoperability and a risk and monitoring tool in a digitalised way, so that we can trace all EU money back to the beneficial owner. And what really was an achievement of the Parliament and of the work of the CONT committee is our members were proud about it, in the new regulations you will find that every beneficial owner must be given, namely into the data.

SOUNDBITE (English), Monika HOHLMEIER (EPP, DE), Rapporteur, We were asking the commission that we would like to know how much subsidies has the Premier Babis received with the 230 companies? There is no answer until now. So we really need such a system, not only because of Mr. Babis, but because of transparency and because of the need that we want to guarantee that the money flows are fair, legally spent and that really there is a distribution where a lot of beneficiaries profit of it and where we have an economic and social impact, a positive impact of our subsidies.