In the Government meeting, an Emergency Ordinance was approved for establishing a state aid scheme to support enterprises operating in the primary production of plant agricultural products, following Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

This normative act aims to provide a direct grant to partially compensate for the increased costs of production, harvesting, transportation, and storage of primary plant agricultural crops obtained from crops planted in the fall of 2022.

The direct grant under this scheme represents a compensatory payment per hectare equivalent to 100 euros, granted to an enterprise engaged in the primary production of agricultural products, for arable land cultivated in the fall of 2022, for a maximum of 162,640 beneficiaries.

The maximum value of the direct grant per beneficiary enterprise cannot exceed the equivalent of 280,000 euros in lei.

The exchange rate for the euro/lei for calculating the total maximum value/amount is the one communicated by the National Bank of Romania on August 1, 2023, namely 4.9334 lei/euro.

The total financial resources required for implementing the scheme are 1,200,000,000 lei, representing the equivalent of 243,239,956 euros, which will be provided from the state budget through the budget of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development for the year 2024.

Payments representing the state aid mentioned in this scheme will be made until June 30, 2024, inclusive.

The beneficiaries are enterprises engaged in the primary production of plant agricultural products, namely agricultural producers registered in the Agricultural Register and the Unique Identification Register, who use arable land, individually or in association, to obtain cereal and oilseed production.

The eligibility conditions are as follows:

a) submission of a payment request in 2023 for a specified area of ​​at least 1 hectare, for one or more of the crops listed in annex no. 1, by the submission deadline in 2023;

b) beneficiaries are not in difficulty, i.e., in liquidation or bankruptcy, at the date of submitting the state aid application, based on the records of the National Trade Register Office.