Clear message that the cross -referenced checks They will proceed with the full range of biological programs, as well as those who received a subsidy from OPEKEPE, the Minister of Rural Development and Food sent Costas Tsiarasin an interview with ERA1. As he announced, the checks “complete the big recipients” and gradually “other categories will follow”. They are already in control of the control team, with the participation of the Financial Police, the AADE and ministry officials’, with the aim of having a very soon clear results. Concerning organic programs, he stressed that from the first samples of the intersections, “about 50% of the controlled do not qualify for the biological program”.
Referring to the exaggerations and failures identified, he spoke of numbers outside reality. For example, as the minister said, Crete “stated 93,000 hectares for organic livestock farming and the next district was 16,000 hectares”. He also pointed out that there was a “huge number of hives” for organic beekeeping, to the extent that – as he typically said – “one could not accept that all the hives in Greece could operate through the program”. In this light, Costas Tsiaras decided to freeze payments while – as he explained – multiple cross checks will be preceded.
Elsewhere, he emphasized that “there is a significant departure from organic programs” as beekeepers, breeders, growers are withdrawing on their own from the application for the file they had submitted. At the same time, he complained to mass avoidance of checks: “While an appointment has been made the next day, the auditors disappear and many of them do not answer the phones.”
At the same time, the Minister of Rural Development and Food stressed that the certification bodies are now targeting. As he pointed out, “we will look at whether the certificates, which actually certified a organic crop, organic beekeeping, organic livestock farming, worked on the basis of the procedure.” He made it clear that “this control has been decided to be universal throughout the spectrum.”
Concerning the OPEKEPE case, Costas Tsiaras pointed out that the phenomenon has timeless characteristics: “Anyone who believes that all these issues are limited to two periods of time controlled by the European Public Prosecutor’s Office is obviously self -sufficient.” As he emphasized, “we must all understand that it is a long -awaited issue, a timeless pathogenicity.”