The efficacy of biodiversity measures paid for through CAP will be scrutinised as part of an audit by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
“In the EU, agriculture is the largest contributor to biodiversity loss,” said Janusz Wojciechowski, the member of the ECA responsible for the audit.
“Our audit will determine how helpful EU contribution has been to correct and even reverse this situation.”
Ireland, along with Germany, Poland, Cyrpus and Romania, has been selected to be included in the audit, which is due out mid-2020.
ECA told the Irish Farmers Journal that it will conduct on-the-spot visits to selected countries as part of the audit.
“We chose a sample of five member states to be visited on the spot, according to criteria such as relevance of spending, geographical spread and representativeness,” a spokesperson said.
It added that Ireland was selected as it was one of the countries that collectively, with the four other selected Member States, represented almost a third of the EAFRD expenditure.
“The audit's result deriving from the member state level, including Ireland, will be used for illustrative purposes for the findings on the European Commission.”
The audit will look at how:
The EU biodiversity strategy and the CAP legal framework were well-designed.The Commission and the member states have improved farming’s contribution to biodiversity.The Commission used pertinent, reliable and up-to-date information and data to monitor and evaluate the farmland biodiversity situation.ECA has also covered biodiversity in a number of other reports, most notably concluding in a 2017 report that greening payments, which were introduced in 2015 to enhance environmental measures on farms, are “unlikely to meet this objective, mainly due the low level of requirements, which largely reflect the normal farming practice.
“We estimate that greening has led to a change in farming practice on only around 5% of all EU farmland.”
The efficacy of biodiversity measures paid for through CAP will be scrutinised as part of an audit by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).
“In the EU, agriculture is the largest contributor to biodiversity loss,” said Janusz Wojciechowski, the member of the ECA responsible for the audit.
“Our audit will determine how helpful EU contribution has been to correct and even reverse this situation.”
Ireland, along with Germany, Poland, Cyrpus and Romania, has been selected to be included in the audit, which is due out mid-2020.
ECA told the Irish Farmers Journal that it will conduct on-the-spot visits to selected countries as part of the audit.
“We chose a sample of five member states to be visited on the spot, according to criteria such as relevance of spending, geographical spread and representativeness,” a spokesperson said.
It added that Ireland was selected as it was one of the countries that collectively, with the four other selected Member States, represented almost a third of the EAFRD expenditure.
“The audit's result deriving from the member state level, including Ireland, will be used for illustrative purposes for the findings on the European Commission.”
The audit will look at how:
The EU biodiversity strategy and the CAP legal framework were well-designed.The Commission and the member states have improved farming’s contribution to biodiversity.The Commission used pertinent, reliable and up-to-date information and data to monitor and evaluate the farmland biodiversity situation.ECA has also covered biodiversity in a number of other reports, most notably concluding in a 2017 report that greening payments, which were introduced in 2015 to enhance environmental measures on farms, are “unlikely to meet this objective, mainly due the low level of requirements, which largely reflect the normal farming practice.
“We estimate that greening has led to a change in farming practice on only around 5% of all EU farmland.”
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