Farmers in Saxony are to receive compensation for delays in the disbursement of EU funds. This was agreed by the Saxon cabinet on Tuesday. The compensation is to be paid out once and in a lump sum, it was said. The lump sum will be calculated in a standardized manner and will cover costs such as interest charges for any bridging loans, deferral fees or any consulting services that may be required. It is still unclear how many farms will apply for such compensation.
In concrete terms, the case concerns direct payments from the EU. In Saxony, these are usually paid out at the end of the year - a total of around 241 million euros for around 7,000 farms. At the end of October, the Ministry of Agriculture admitted that this would probably not happen until February due to problems with software adaptation. The ministry claimed that regulations on the European Union's common agricultural policy had been fundamentally changed from 2023 onwards and that there was a lack of IT specialists for the software adaptations.
