European Court of Auditors has released a report about their study of agri-environmental support systems.
The Court found that although the environmental pressures are indentified in rural development programmes, they coudn’t be easily used to provide a clear justification of agri-environment payments. A progress could be seen in the implementation of common monitoring and evaluation framework, but considerable problems existed as regards the relevance and reliability of management information. In particular, very little information was available on the environmental benefits of agri-environmental payments.
The Court acknowledged the crucial role farmers play in the implementation of agri-environment payments and emphasized that it is important that farmers are well supported through guidance and that aid amounts provide them with right incentive.
The audit found also that most expenditure was made on horizontal sub-measures, without applying selection procedures. That was not supported by decisions about the desirable degree of targeting, on the basis of the costs involved. In addition, management decisions were not sufficiently evidence-based and did not focus payments at specific environmental problem.
The recommendations by the Court were:
- the Commission and the Member States should better clarify, justify and report on agri-environment sub-measures;
- the Commission should assess more rigorously key elements in rural development programmes before approving them;
- for the next programming period the Commission should consider wheter:
- agri-environment expenditure should be more precisely targeted;
- there should be a higher rate of EU contribution for sub-measures with a higher environmental potential;
- there should be a clear distinction between simple and more demanding agri-environment submeasures; and
- the Member States should be more proactive in managing agri-environment payments.
