Director General of the Romanian Paying Agency (AFIR) Adrian Chesnoiu has recently described the new measures available for EU financing which shall open soon for the Romanian agri-food sector and the rural area.
New measures to start soon
AFIR expects that some €600 million will be soon made available to agricultural producers and processors. “We are expecting a very busy 2025: on the one hand, we have to close the 2014-2020 financial period. The deadline for the last payment request is December 31, but we will receive requests until September 30, 2025,” Adrian Chesnoiu said on TVR International. According to him, the Agency for Rural Investment Financing (AFIR) has more than half a billion euro to finance two measures that will be opened very soon: DR-16 and DR-23: "On the other hand, we are very focused on the measures we have left. We still have almost €600 million for two domains (...), the intervention area for field and greenhouse vegetables, but also the potato component, known to our beneficiaries as measures DR-16, and DR-23, a funding line for the processing of agricultural raw materials to obtain non-agricultural products for bread factories, milling, and baking. We will launch these two funding lines sometime in mid-June, at the end of June," said the AFIR director general.
In September: young farmers and small farms
According to the head of AFIR, three new measures will be opened in the second half of 2025: DR-12 - Consolidation of young farmers, DR-14 - Investments in small farms and the Renewable Energy Scheme: "In September or in the second half of the year, we will have dedicated funding lines for young farmers and small farms, i.e. for young farmers who are already established and want to develop, or for small businesses, which will receive fairly good funding of €50,000. Towards the end of the year, we will relaunch, for 2025, the photovoltaic component for green energy production dedicated to agriculture and the food industry, where demand has been very high," added Adrian Chesnoiu.
AFIR: 25 years of support for young farmers
According to the Agency, between 2000 and 2025, over 54,000 young farmers started their activity with non-reimbursable financial support through AFIR measures. Measure DR-12, which will be opened in September 2025, is aimed at young farmers who started up activities between 2014 and 2020 with European funds (through sub-measure 6.1.) and now wish to develop further. The maximum support is €200,000 per beneficiary.
Only one financing measure is currently open
At present, the only AFIR measure open is DR 24 - Investments in forestry technologies that improve the resilience and environmental value of forest ecosystems, with two components:
- Component for applicants who are economic operators certified for forestry activities - allocation of almost €69.313 million. By June 3, 2025, 274 projects had been submitted, with a total value of almost €82.163 million, and total funds of over €21.8 million are still available.
- Component for applicants who are forestry management associations – allocation of over €17.328 million. By June 3, 2025, 26 projects had been submitted, with a total value of almost €4 million, and total funds of almost €22 million were still available.
The deadline for submitting AFIR funding applications for DR-24 is July 4, 2025.