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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Environment
Ajit Niranjan

Revealed: billionaires are ‘ultimate beneficiaries’ linked to €3bn of EU farming subsidies

A man ploughs soil in a tractor on an agricultural field in Poland
Seventeen billionaires received EU farming handouts through companies they owned in whole or in part over a four-year period. Photograph: Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto/Rex/Shutterstock

The European Union gave generous farming subsidies to the companies of more than a dozen billionaires between 2018 and 2021, the Guardian can reveal, including companies owned by the former Czech prime minister Andrej Babiš and the British businessman Sir James Dyson.

Billionaires were “ultimate beneficiaries” linked to €3.3bn (£2.76bn) of EU farming handouts over the four-year period even as thousands of small farms were closed down, according to the analysis of official but opaque data from EU member states.

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