Member of Parliament Dubravka Šuica and county prefect Nikola Dobroslavić have handed out one and a half tonnes of mandarins from the Neretva Valley to passersby and members of Parliament in front of the main entrance into the European Parliament in Bruxelles in order to draw attention to the export problem of mandarin producers in the wake of the Russian embargo on the import of fruit from EU countries.
Due to the Russian embargo the European Union has provided resources to subsidize 7900 tonnes of mandarins at 1.4 kuna per kg. That means that Europe will subsidize the unpicked fruit quantities or the surplus of mandarins which will not be sold by regular means due to the ban on export into Russia from its own funds. These mandarins will be distributed to social care institutions, schools, kindergartens, shelters and student dormitories.
“We wanted to draw the attention to the harmfulness of the Russian embargo to the Neretva Valley. Given that the European Week of Regions and Cities is already underway and a lot of Europeans are here, we wanted to use this opportunity to make the Union’s citizens aware of how important it is to either create new export possibilities for our producers or introduce higher Commission subsidies, which was already achieved in the second wave, but is unfortunately still not enough”, sad member of parliament Dubravka Šuica.
MEP Šuica, county prefect of the Dubrovnik-Neretva county and a big number of assistants and interns of Croatian members of parliament took part in this action, together with the staff of the Representation office of the Dubrovnik-Neretva. The county prefect Dobronić emphasized that he hopes that this action will draw the attention of the European institutions to the issue of Neretva Valley mandarin marketing and encourage them to solve it.
A record yield of 80 000 tonnes of high quality mandarins is expected in the Neretva Valley this year and new markets need to be found due to the Russo-Ukrainian crisis because only 15 000 tonnes of this fruit can be sold on the Croatian domestic market.
“The action of handing out mandarins in the heart of Europe is a good opportunity to encourage the producers to find new export destinations, for example the Benelux countries, with almost 30 million potential consumers”, concluded Šuica.
