A main priority of the Slovak presidency meeting held in Oponice, Slovakia, recently was to rubber stamp a joint declaration to combat unfair trading practices between the countries of the Visegrad Group with the participation of four additional countries, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia and Croatia.
The joint stance of the countries will be represented in the European Union by Gabriela Matečná, the Agriculture Minister of Slovakia. According to her the issue hasn’t been solved so far in the European Union. The initiative’s ambition is to protect the primary producers while participating in forming the European Union’s new Common Agricultural Policy.
The previous policy was differentiating trading practices and several methods were in a rather gray area which caused problems for local entrepreneurs, mostly in the field of agriculture.
According to Matečná, in 2016 during the Slovak presidency, the European Union emphasized the importance of the issue in a document approved by the ministers of agriculture from all 28 member states.
The Central European countries believe that the joint declaration helps to solve the situation, partially because the European Union needs to approve a new agricultural policy starting in 2020. The countries also suggest that the EU should compensate the farmers for the damages connected with climate change.
