How the mafia is undermining agriculture

The EU Parliament complains that aid money is disappearing. The number of unreported cases is high. There would be progress in the fight against the mafia, but there are dangers due to the high transfers.

MIn northern Europe, afiosi are often introduced as gentlemen in fine suits and elegant shoes. They like to disguise themselves – as farmers, for example. There is no other item of expenditure where the European Union distributes as much money as it does through the system of the common agricultural policy. The European recovery fund is now being added. So it is not surprising that Italy has repeatedly been targeted by the inspectors. At €190 billion, the country is the largest recipient of the European reconstruction aid decided during the pandemic, and Italy has always been a large recipient of agricultural aid. Various mafia organizations sense an opportunity here to tap public funds.

“It’s an ongoing problem. The criminals invest money and time because they are attracted by the many billions of euros in the EU,” said Monika Hohlmeier at a press conference in Rome on Friday. The MEP, as chair of the Budgetary Control Committee in the EU Parliament, has paid a visit to the Italian authorities with a handful of other committee members to check on things. She then reported on cases in which up to 200 million euros were evaded, a number of them in Sicily or Calabria. Most of the time, public authorities and their environment were bribed, she reported – or the competition was brutally restricted: “In one case it was about the auction of a lease – in the end there was only one bidder, because everyone else knew that it was a member of the organized crime,” she said. Another case involved illegally imported pesticides and artificial fertilizers from China, which are banned in the EU. “From the outside it looked like normal artificial fertilizer or normal pesticides, but they were clear fakes”.