Last week the European Commission began to dedicate a space with information on the beneficiaries of Cap subsidies on the website of the General Directorate for Agriculture, in conformity with the guidelines for shared management with member states. It is the latter (so far only eleven) that, under their own responsibility, voluntarily furnish data on “volumes and precision that vary considerably from one country to another”. The measure is part of the European initiative for transparency (IET) launched by Brussels in 2004. As regards agricultural policy, the European Council and Parliament have approved the Executive’s proposal contained in the new CAP Financial Regulation “to guarantee total transparency from 2009 on”. Commenting on the decision, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Mariann Fischer Boel declared: “European citizens have the right to know how their money is spent: the publication of these contacts on the Internet forms an essential stage in providing the public with this type of information”.
