Agriculture minister asks EU for help in ‘severe water shortage crisis’

The Minister of agriculture will insist to the European Commission on the request that she had already made to anticipate support measures to farmers as a result of the drought. In an interview with Renascença, Maria do Céu Antunes says that the country is going through a “severe crisis due to lack of water”, warning that it is necessary to support the sector, which is currently facing a significant increase in production costs.

“I have reinforced the request I had already made 15 days ago to the European Commissioner for Agriculture, namely, for us to be able to reduce the control fees and, also, to allow anticipated support measures and their simplification,″ she said.

Maria do Céu Antunes will also emphasise this request during the Extraordinary Council of Agriculture Ministers, which runs until Tuesday in Strasbourg, as Portugal is going through a “double crisis” due to the “rise in production costs” and the “severe crisis caused by the lack of water”.

And despite the growing tendency to have periods of drought, increasingly intense, the water consumption from public networks has increased by 25% in the last 20 years, according to Correio da Manhã. At the beginning of the century, each citizen consumed 52 thousand litres of water per year, and by 2020, consumption had risen to 65 thousand litres.