Press Release: Information note of the European Court of Auditors concerning Special Report No 8/2008 ‘Is cross-compliance an effective policy?’

The new Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which took effect in 2005, is characterised by a single payment made to each beneficiary independently of agricultural production (a process known as 'decoupling'). However, an essential element of the new CAP is that payments due may be reduced if the beneficiaries have not respected certain existing rules in the areas of environment, food safety, animal and plant health and animal welfare, or they have not fulfilled the newly established requirement to maintain all agricultural land in good agricultural and environmental condition.

The single payment at the full rate has therefore become conditional and, since 2007, this policy of cross-compliance has been extended to payments made for certain rural development measures.

The European Court of Auditors carried out an audit in 2008 of the cross-compliance policy at the Commission and in seven Member States representing the diversity of agriculture across Europe.

In the report which it recently adopted, the Court concluded that the objectives of this policy have not been defined in a specific, measurable, relevant, and realistic way, and that at farm level many obligations are still only for form’s sake and therefore have little chance of leading to the expected changes, whether reducing the size of payments or modifying farming practices.