Practical aspects about agricultural producers who want to attract european funds

Abstract

The Romanian’s integration in European Union presumes the access to different financing opportunities for people in the rural area in general and for agricultural producers in particular. The process of attracting financing resources can be considered from more points of view: the terms to be fulfilled, the projects’ selection criteria, the possibilities to elaborate projects, the difficulties met by the applicants, the practical results of attracting European funds. Even if in the present there are more financing active measures for the rural area, the accent is on the analysis and the results obtained at two specific measures: 141 “Sustaining the agricultural semi-subsistence farms” and 112 “Establishing the young farmers”. The analysis refers to: the degree of informing the possible beneficiaries, the manner of involving various institutions into informing these people, the terms to be fulfilled and the needed documentation, difficulties in obtaining this documents, the manner of elaborating the projects and the steps to submit them. The paper presents these practical aspects and their implications on long term. There are activities developed in Iaşi County by the experts in agricultural counseling and also by other institutions and firms with the same profile. There are also some inadequate approaches for the process of attracting European funds. In some cases, involving the local administration and the agricultural counselors has had positive results because they sustained these activities, but in other cases the possible beneficiaries of the European funds were reticent. In this context, attracting financing resources by the agricultural producers (including animal breeders) is an opportunity for developing agricultural activities and for achieving investments to modernize the farms.