With lobby more progress can be made

Agriterra and the ZLTO have already been working together for many years with the federation APA Transilvania in Romania. With the entry of Romania into the EU in 2007, the contents of this cooperation changed, because since then Romania was no longer considered a developing country and, as a result, Agriterra no longer was allowed to finance organisations within Romania.

The entry into the EU, however, did not automatically imply improvement of the situation of the Romanian farmers. More than ever farming organisations have to stand up for the interests of their members and raise their voice, both nationally and internationally.

A Romanian farmer who fights hard for this is Claudiu Franc. Claudiu Franc, a 46-year old veterinary surgeon, studied at the Agricultural University and worked in a state cattle breeding company with 7,000 heads of cattle (dairy cows and young cattle). After three years, at the end of 1989, he returned to his mountainous native region Maramures, known for its cattle breeding and fruit culture. Since 2004 he has been a member of the cattle breeding society there, and also of the local council. Two years later he was elected chairman of the society of cattle breeders from the region of Maramures. Since then he dedicates himself to the protection of cattle breeder interests together with APA Transilvania.

His dream of arranging a modern cattle breeding company took shape in in 2007, when his project received support from the EU by means of the Sapard-programme (’Special action programme for agriculture and rural development’), an instrument which the EU applies to support candidate member states in Central and East Europe. This success gave an impulse to Franc to fight even harder for the interests of the cattle breeders in order to gain more success for the sector. This, amongst other things, led in 2007 to the foundation of the National Federation of Cattle breeders, where Claudiu Franc was elected vice-chairman.


APA Transilvania was supported by Agriterra and ZLTO in organising a training on the topics of lobby and protection of interests, and about the communal agricultural politics of the EU. This training took place in February of this year, and was organised by Frank van Oorschot of the ZLTO. During the training the member organisations of APA learned everything about lobby, EU policies, subsidy schemes, participation, and so on. This way they got to know that Romania does not have representatives in the European Economic Social Comittee (EESC) in Brussels, while the EESC has a bridging function between the European institutions and the middle social area and gives advice to the EU. Therefore the EESC is the obvious place for farmers to raise their voice.


The Federation of cattle breeders took the advice of Van Oorschot to heart and appointed Claudiu Franc representative in the Committee. He has already visited Brussels once (in april this year) to participate in conferences about the meat price of cattle. At the end of this year a new round of conferences with colleagues from other countries has been planned in Brussels. Franc’s contribution there is of major importance to APA Transilvania, their member organisations and the Romanian farmers.