As reported by the State Secretariat for Communication, the Spanish government will meet in an extraordinary Council of Ministers, which will be the second to be held this week.
The data provided on Tuesday by the Ministry for Ecological Transition confirmed the drop in the water reserve to 48.9 %, making it the fifth week in a row that it has fallen.
The Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, Luis Planas, and the Third Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, are expected to explain the content of the new package of measures at the end of this Extraordinary Council, as confirmed by sources from both departments.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food will play a special role in this meeting and in the measures to be taken, as the primary sector is one of the most affected by this situation of water scarcity.
The Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has announced that the measures to be approved by the Council of Ministers to deal with the drought seek to anticipate and guarantee, if necessary, the supply of water to cities and its availability for farmers.
In this regard, he recalled that last year a package of measures had already had to be adopted to guarantee the water supply in cities and to help farmers, and he stressed the importance of the third cycle hydrological plans, designed to deal with these episodes of drought.
The biggest claim in the history of agricultural insurance
The ministers will meet a day after learning that the drought of the current season has become the biggest loss in the history of agricultural insurance, having caused damage to dry arable crops in Spain, worth more than 300 million euros.
At the last European Council of Agriculture Ministers, Spain asked the European Commission to allow an advance of the highest possible percentage of Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) aid due to the drought situation affecting the countryside, as well as a more flexible application of the CAP, given the situation.
That same 25 April, the BOE published an order of modules with a minimum 25% reduction in the IRPF 2022 for 800,000 farmers and stockbreeders, a linear reduction that takes into account the drought and the economic consequences of the war in Ukraine.
Less than a month ago, the national drought round table also met, where the government undertook to study further measures to support the countryside.
At that meeting, Agriculture acknowledged that the drought situation is serious and widespread, although with significant differences in the territory, with the Guadalquivir and Guadiana basins and the inland areas of Catalonia being particularly affected.
Source: EFE
