Meanwhile, farmers are criticising that the majority of the stimulus package were not direct aids, and that there had been no discussions with their representatives beforehand. In general, farmers feel that there is a lack of political support for their sector.
The director of the Farmer's Centre, Josiane Willems, stated that farmers were not being paid generous compensations. In fact, the majority of the €5 million – namely €3 million – are being held back for the Assises Agricoles:
"They plan to do an analysis of the market evolution. And then, depending on which sector really suffered the most, they decide if these funds will be paid out or not. In actual fact, this means that at the moment only those businesses which had to shut down immediately will receive aids while the others receive nothing at all." The agricultural sector was able to and had to keep production going. It is also not so easy to stop production from one day to the next:
"It was of course extremely important that food was still being produced throughout the entire lockdown. In that sense our sector is systemically relevant. But farmers are right to feel a little bit ignored. This is why we are insisting on the need for a precise monitoring of the price evolution which doesn’t focus too much on 5-year averages or similar factors."
Willems pointed out that throughout the entire Covid pandemic, farmers had presented demands to the minister and raised awareness for the situation again and again but were still not involved in the debate.
The president of the Free Luxembourgish Farmer's Association, Aloyse Marx, stated that the true extent of the losses for the agricultural sector would only become apparent in about 3 to 4 months. While the announced amount of €5 million was subject to certain conditions, it was unclear how these conditions were defined.
"In that sense we have to wait and see what these conditions exactly are before we can assess if the amount is sufficient or not. But overall, it's obviously a very modest sum against the backdrop of the potentially immense negative consequences which agricultural businesses will experience in the medium term."
Marx also joined the Farmer's Centre in its criticism of a lack of political support and demanded that politicians should listen more to farmers and their representatives.
