Scottish Government removes data on agricultural subsidies

Posted on by

Following a European Court of Justice Ruling, the Scottish Government has removed all data on public subsidies paid to farmers from its website. The ruling stated that European legislation that obliges member states to publish data on the beneficiaries of agricultural subsidies is a breach of the right to privacy under the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, the ruling merely states that the Council of Ministers and European Commission exceeded their powers in making publication obligatory. It does not state that publication is of itself unlawful.

So, in the interests of transparency, freedom of information, and with a nod to Wikileaks, I am publishing the data here. The following links are to Microsoft Excel files.

Scottish Farm Subsidies 2000-2004 (20.81Mb) with thanks to Rob Edwards

Scottish Farm Subsidies 2005 (4.46Mb)

Scottish Farm Subsidies 2006 (4.63Mb)

Scottish Farm Subsidies 2007 (9.31Mb)

Scottish Farm Subsidies 2008 (8.33Mb)

The last 10 years of statistics on this are summarised in Chapter 18 of The Poor Had No Lawyers

The DEFRA website [link broken June 2024] states that the European Commission has requested member states to suspend the publication of information on individual beneficiaries.

The Full Text of the judgement and other papers can be found here.