The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has ruled that the EU Commission won't have to pay Denmark the hundreds of millions of kroner in agricultural support that the Danish state has demanded for several years now.
The ECJ upheld a verdict from 2012 that ruled that Denmark would not receive the 750 million kroner of fallow field aid from the EU Commission in a case stemming from 2002-2004.
”Naturally, I am disappointed with the decision,” Sarah Børner, the head of EU issues at the Danish agriculture and fisheries agency NaturErhvervstyrelsen, said in a press release.
”We've been convinced that we followed the rules back then, which is why we launched the case against the EU Commission and then appealed the verdict by the EU General Court to the European Court of Justice.”
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When we said stop …
The case began over a decade ago when Danish farmers were given money to stop farming at full capacity because the EU was trying to avoid a surplus of agricultural produce.
One of the conditions required Danish grain and rapeseed farmers to stop growing the crops.
However, they were supposed to maintain the fields, and when the EU inspectors discovered that 43 fallow land areas had been left to nature, the EU ruled in 2009 that the 750 million kroner that the Danish state had forked out in aid to its farmers did not meet EU requirements.
