The European Commission and EU member states will publish the names of farm subsidy recipients, and the amounts they receive, on the Web, beginning 30 April 2009.
The websites will put into practice regulations adopted in 2006, in which the Member States agreed to publish a list of all recipients of EU agricultural subsidies for each financial year.
Since farm subsidies are given at both the EU and national level, one website will be run by the Commission, and others by individual Member States. According to the Commission, the websites will be harmonized, and will allow users to search for recipients by name, municipality, and amounts received.
"This level of transparency is something both we and the European Commission have been pushing for and we're glad we now have agreement on how the system will work," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.
While some EU Member States already provide information about their farm subsidy recipients, others do not. Greece and Austria have denied requests for information about farm subsidy recipients, and a host of others have provide only partial information, according to Farmsubsidy.org, a network that works to improve transparency in EU farm subsidies.
