The Regional Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry participated in the conference held under the theme "The Future of Agricultural Policy" in Angra do Heroísmo on Thursday night. The event was promoted MEP Luís Paulo Alves, who brought to the Azores the European socialist MEPs that make up the working group in charge of reviewing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

Speaking to journalists, Noé Rodrigues stressed the importance of this initiative at a "crucial" stage of the CAP revision "when positions are already being taken." Hence, we need to reassert the Azores' arguments in this context.

The government official said this event was an opportunity to show MEPs the proper use and implementation of EU funds in the Region as well as "the positive impact on our agriculture and the legitimate claims of Azorean farmers regarding the allocation of the necessary funding for our rural development and production support under POSEI."

In this context, the Region claims the management autonomy of both programmes, as it currently happens, "with the possibility of presenting programmes adapted to its reality as an Outermost Region with specific problems and reinforcing the allocation of Community funds."

According to Noé Rodrigues, this claim is based on "two main reasons," including the fact that we have known how to make a good use of Community funds and the intention of converging support measures in several EU Member-States," whose average is currently higher than the amount of funds allocated to Portuguese farmers."

Therefore, the Regional Secretary pointed out, "we think that Portugal must defend its arguments, claim the reinforcement of funds for national agriculture, which should be proportionally allocated to the Region through POSEI" as this programme allows us "to directly support farms."

Before the conference, the MEPS visited a producers' cooperative and a private company on Terceira. In the context of this conference, they also visited a dairy industry on São Miguel on Friday.