Ukrainian farmers will not be required to repay funds received from state aid to support farms during 2018. During this press conference, UAC Chairman Andriy Dykun emphasized, noting that such information has recently been disseminated to agricultural producers.

 The reason for such rumors was the decision of the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal on the claim of the Ukrainian Agri Council for recognition as unlawful and the cancellation of the Cabinet Decrees No. 107 and No. 107 of 07.02.2018, which distributed state subsidies in the agrarian sector of Ukraine.

A lot of agrarian associations, people's deputies, leaders of political forces and President Volodymyr Zelensky himself emphasized the injustice and illegality of the distribution of state subsidies, which was approved by these resolutions. However, the UAC became the only organization that went to court and, by providing substantiated evidence, was able to prove the illegality of the adopted resolutions and to obtain their cancellation.

“I would like to emphasize that the Ukranian Agri Council in its lawsuit did not demand and could not demand a refund of the money paid to the agrarians, because the corresponding payments were made not by the public union, but by the government. Only the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine can demand a refund. Our aim was to prove that the government of Volodymyr Groysman had violated the law in approving the appropriate procedures and this resulted in small and medium-sized farmers receiving disproportionately small amounts of money. And we did it. Also, UAC will apply to NABU for the court's decision to be included in the criminal case files, which investigative agencies opened upon the statement of UAC, ”Andriy Dykun said.

However, in order not to put the current government in a difficult position, the Ukrainian Agri Council proposed to conclude a peace agreement. Within this framework, the public union is ready to abandon its requirements for repeal of CMU Resolutions No. 106 and 107, if the government recognizes the illegality of the amendments made to Resolution  No.107, which removed the limit for compensation from the budget for the cost of construction or reconstruction of livestock facilities. Prior to the adoption of the amendments, the amount should not have exceeded UAH 150 million per construction object (paragraph 4, clause 11).

In 2018, only one company in Ukraine received reimbursement of more than UAH 150 million for one object - Myronivsky Khliboprodukt, which received a total of UAH 932 million from the budget, which is almost a quarter of all state support payments made last year.

"The only reasons why the government may refuse to conclude a settlement agreement may be disagreement with our view that the government of Volodymyr Groysman has violated the law, or disagreement with the need to set a limit for compensation of one object with a limit of 150 million UAH" , - emphasized Deputy Chairman of the UAC Mykhaylo Sokolov.

Settlement of the dispute amicably on the terms proposed by the UAC will allow the current government to continue working in full-time mode, as well as demand the return of more than 600 million UAH of MHP state support received in 2018 to those guilty of violating the law.

It will also be an additional ground for criminal prosecution of the ex-leadership of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Ministry of Agrarian Policy of Ukraine. The respective statement that these persons knew about the negative consequences of the approval of the distribution of agrodotations, stipulated in the regulations, and accepted them, aware of their unlawfulness,was submitted to the NABU in August this year.

The Vice President of the Law Firm “Capital”, Attorney Dmytro Loshakov also emphasized violations in the process of making these decisions during the press conference. He noted that gross violations were identified in the case.

“The Cabinet of Ministers provided us with the materials on which these resolutions were adopted and it became clear in the court of first instance that they were adopted secretly, without discussion, without agreement with the line ministries. Moreover, we found that after the resolution was adopted, its text was changed before it was published. That is, changes were made in a non-legal way. Then, in accordance with the procedure, this resolution was discussed at the profile committee of the VRU, where it was decided that the limit of 150 million UAH can not be lifted. However, the government still lifted these restrictions, creating discriminatory conditions for individual producers,”said Dmytro Loshakov.

The history of the issue:

 In 2017, a special VAT payment regime for agricultural enterprises was abolished. In order to partially offset the losses incurred by farmers, the government decided to provide them with financial assistance, the so-called "quasi-accumulation of VAT". However, the formula for allocating subsidies contained a grave error, which resulted in almost no subsidies for livestock and crop production (which is practically all Ukrainian milk and pork farms).

In 2017, according to this order, nearly half - UAH 1.9 billion of the UAH 4.95 billion allocated from the budget - was received by Myronivsky Khliboproduct owned by Yuriy Kosyuk and Ukrlandfarming owned by Oleg Bakhmatyuk.

Leading agrarian associations, including UAC, have repeatedly appealed to the government, pointing out the unfairness of this order of distribution of state support.

In 2018, the government approved a number of resolutions (CMU Resolutions No. 86, No. 106 and No. 107 of 07/02/2018), according to which the distribution of agrodotations was conducted on the same principle as in 2017. The largest amount of funds - UAH 932 million was received by Myronivsky Khliboproduct.

In addition to the fact that the procedure for payment of state subsidies, approved by the Cabinet, was unprofitable for small and medium-sized agribusiness, the rulings themselves were adopted with violations. Therefore, in August 2018, the “Ukrainian Agri Council” (UAC) filed a lawsuit with the Kyiv district administration, the defendant of which was the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, seeking recognition of the CMU resolutions of 07.02.2018 No. 86, No. 106 and No. 107 as illegal and their cancellation. However, in May 2019, the court dismissed the UAC claim.

On July 22, 2019, the public union filed an appeal and on December 10, 2019, the Sixth Administrative Court of Appeal partially upheld the lawsuit of the SAR, finding it illegal and quashing the Cabinet of Ministers' Decree  No. 106 and No. 107 of February 7, 2018.