First EU funds for Romania this year: food processing, small farmers and (settled) young farmers
Romanian Minister of Agriculture and Rural, Florin Barbu, has just started its second mandate as minister in late December 2024, when the new cabinet was sworn in following parliament elections. In a recent meeting with Romanian farmers’ leaders, he sketched the estimated calendar of calls for EU-funded projects for the first part of 2025.
The projects that can be submitted in the coming period shall be directed to the vegetables and potato sectors; food processing; small farms; and farmers who settled down as young farmers through projects financed in the previous programming period (2014-2020, including the transition period of 2021-2022) or who settled down as young farm managers in the last 5 years and who are still below 45 years old. The purpose of this last measure is the consolidation of the farms already set up by young farmers.
These European funds will be accessible as usual through the paying agency AFIR - the Agency for Rural Investment Financing.
According to the information disclosed to the farmers’ organisations, the following project submission sessions are to be launched in the first quarter of 2025:
DR 16 - Investments in the vegetable and/or potato sector;
RD 23 - Investments for the processing and marketing of agricultural products into food and processed products other than those referred to in Annex 1 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union;
RD 14 - Investment in small farms;
DR 12 - Investments in the consolidation of holdings of young and newly settled farmers.
The following project sessions are estimated to be launched in the second quarter of 2025:
DR 26 - Establishment of irrigation systems;
DR 18 - Investments in floriculture, medicinal and aromatic plants.
Minister Florin Barbu also indicated that the measure aimed at the purchase of irrigation equipment is trying to be launched in July 2025, with a budget of about 100 million euro.
Food processing, the development of the livestock sector, improved irrigation, are all top priority policy subjects of the current (and previous) government. Also the generational renewal of the farming sector is of great importance in aging society like Romania’s, not only from the food security perspective, but also for ensuring the vitality of rural areas.