"It's clear we must get farmers to start reimbursing the funds," said Le Maire in an interview with the French newspaper Le Parisien.

Le Maire said the procedure would be dealt with on a "case-by-case basis so that the land holdings of the weakest farmers would not be jeopardised."

His office plans to send letters in September to the agricultural associations around France to determine who had benefitted from these subsidies. "This won't be easy, because certain farmers have left the sector," he added.

The agriculture minister reasoned that it would be easier to deal with the situation now than to saddle farmers with an even bigger penalty five or six years down the line.

Interviewed by French magazine Le Point in its online edition, the president of the French National Federation of Fruit Producers, Bruno Dupont, was unequivocal, "It's not up to the producers to pay for the fallout from a policy which they did not devise."