LONDON, Nov 7 (AFP) - Prince Albert of Monaco is among several seriously rich landowners raking in subdidies under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy, the British humanitarian organisation Oxfam said Monday.

It said the prince, who has a two-billion-euro personal fortune, received EUR 287,308 euros in subsidies for his 700-hectare cereal farm in northern France.

It quoted figures from the French newspaper La Tribune that show the biggest French farming businesses swallow up the vast majority of its EU agricultural subsidies.

"The new figures show that France's biggest 12 recipients each get more than EUR 500,000 a year in subsidies alone," Oxfam said. "The biggest two get EUR 1.7 million a year between them."

France gets around EUR 9.4 billion euros from the EUR 44bn CAP budget, it said, adding that its analysis of EU statistics that "show that the top 15 percent of French farming businesses consume a massive 60 percent of its direct payments."

"This gives a lie to the French argument that it uses EU subsidies to support its small farmers," Oxfam added. "They plainly don't. Most small French farmers – 70 percent of them -- get only 17 percent of the subsidies doled out by Paris."

Copyright AFP

Subject: French news