ETHEAS: OPEKEPE’s circular for the payment of subsidies is amended – What period does it cover?

The Organization for Payments and Control of Community Aid Guidance and Guarantees proceeded with the amendment of its circular for the payment of subsidies from 2014 to 2020 (OPECPE), which is a result, as pointed out by ETHEAS after its intervention.

Especially, as it is characteristically pointed out “after the letter of ETHEAS to OPEKEPE at the beginning of December, it seems that the Payments Organization is forced today to change the manifestly unconstitutional and illegal content of its amending circular with no. Prot.: 78078/9.12.2024″.

ETHEAS, in its document, had pointed out that under the responsibility of OPEKEPE, a significant number of objections that have been vindicatedas well as court decisions, positive for the producersbeneficiaries, remain unexecuted for many years, unjustifiably and illegally. To remedy this situation, from November 2023, a special IT project was assigned by OPEKEPE for the period 2014-2020, in order to make the payments to the beneficiaries who have been waiting for them for a long time. For 14 months nothing substantial had progressed, until recently a commission was established.

The modification

While a significant number of beneficiaries of the period 2014-20 waited for the payment of the entitled aids, for all the years there are effectsfrom the wrong decisions or payments of OPEKEPE, this legal requirement was overturned by the content of the following paragraph of circular 78078/9.12.2024 and in which the verbatim references are following:

The original arrangement of OPEKEPE

Objections or court orders

In any case in which the farmer, after submitting an objection or an open appeal or exercising a legal remedy or remedy, was vindicated by a final decision of a competent administrative authority or a competent court for direct aid regimes, then these changes are taken into account in the calculation of aid from the year, in which the said decision was issued”.

After intervention however, the above section is modified as follows:

Objections or court orders

“In every case in which the farmer, after submitting an objection or an open appeal or exercising a legal remedy or remedy, was vindicated by a final decision of a competent administrative authority or a competent court for the direct support regimes, then these changes are taken into account in the calculation of the support for the year to which the issued decision relates and from there on”.

Finally, ETHEAS points out that a number of questions to OPEKEPE are pending, which remain unanswered and operate at the expense of producers and the aid they receive.