Minister of Rural Development and Food Margaritis Schinas, speaking at the 16th conference of the New Democracy Party, stressed that easy illusions and populism can have a great cost for the country.
“The Southwest has been on the right side of history throughout time and our ideas have been vindicated. Today the country is at a different stage. We have a prime minister who is one of the most credible leaders of the European family. But we must not forget what we went through and what we experienced in 2010 and 2015. Some want to make us forget, others want to rebrand us to come back. This time we will not bite, Greeks suffered and learned,” he continued.
<span style="white-space: Schinas said that in this new reality, the debate on the primary sector and the region is back at the centre of the discussion.
“We have potential aperiodicities. Greek agri-food, olive oil, feta cheese, wine, over 120 PDO products, fish farming, fruit, are now the best ambassadors of our country. We have a very big challenge ahead of us. To move from a logic of management, from a logic of payments to a logic of a total reorganization of the countryside and the Greek region,” he stressed.
The Minister of Rural Development said that alongside these great potentials there are also pathologies, difficulties and problems. “The biggest pathogen was the payment system. The government took a difficult but necessary political decision to proceed with a radical consolidation of the OPEKEPE by transferring it to the AADE. Not to sweep the problem under the carpet, but because European resources belong to the real producers, the beneficiaries, the householders. The new payment system must be correct, fair, transparent and absolutely reliable. The transition is a historic choice, it shows that this government has the will to break with decades of pathologies.”
<span style="white-space: Schinas said that more than €1 billion will be paid by the end of June and €2.3 billion by the end of the year. "The big winners of this reform will be the honest producers. We are with them and we are working for them. The manipulators, the circuits, will find us against them. We have done the same by putting an end to another system that gave birth to organic monkey products. For all this, the party is over, we are finally turning the page," he said.
“I’m used to the hard stuff. I know that the country will not roll backwards again. I am confident that we will get through this. This fight is just beginning and it will be a winning one,” he said.
