27.3.2004   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

CE 78/572

1.

Has the Commission in the meantime carried out an overall assessment of the impact of the support provided to less-favoured areas over past decades? If so, when will this assessment be forwarded to Parliament? If not, why not?

2.

In the course of producing its assessment, has the Commission been able to make use of, or will it be able to make use of, information and assessments provided by Member States or by national or regional auditing authorities concerning support for less-favoured areas? Is the Commission prepared to provide a summary of the reports received?

3.

What guarantees does the Commission have that the assessments and information provided by Member States are comprehensive and reliable? Is the data suitable for mutual comparison between Member States?

4.

‘Cross-compliance’ requirements are expected to play a significant part in the common agricultural policy. The way in which these requirements — for example, ‘good agricultural practice’ — are incorporated in the support scheme for less-favoured areas is highly unsatisfactory. This is mainly because the concepts and standards applied are vague and ambiguous. How and when does the Commission intend to eliminate this shortcoming?

1. and 2.

Mid-term evaluations for the current rural development programming period, including the less-favoured area measure, were to be presented by the Member States by the end of 2003, which was done for almost all programmes. A Community-level conspectus of these evaluations will be available in 2004. Further information can be expected from updatings of the mid-term evaluations, from the ex-post evaluations and from a special evaluation of the less-favoured areas.

The evaluation at present available to the Commission is for the previous programming period (1994-1999). That Community-level evaluation analysed whether the policy objectives defined in the relevant Regulations were achieved, and uses the national ex-post evaluation reports to support and illustrate the analysis.

The final report (Evaluation of the Regulation (EC) No 950/97 (2) measures for improvement of agricultural structures) contains the following conclusions on compensation:

3.

The quality of the evaluations made at national level is ensured by applying the relevant common rules specifying the scope of the evaluations and how they are to be carried out (Articles 54 to 57 of Commission Regulation (EC) No 445/2002 (3)). Those rules also require common evaluation questions to be defined and a common structure for the reports to be followed.

4.

Under Article 5 of Council Regulation (EC) No 1782/2003 (4), by 1 January 2005 Member States must define, at national or regional level, minimum requirements for good agricultural and environmental conditions on the basis of Annex IV to that Regulation, taking into account the specific characteristics of the areas concerned, including soil and climatic conditions. Those standards will facilitate implementation of good farming practice as defined in Article 29 of Regulation (EC) No 445/2002, entailing, as a minimum, compliance with the general mandatory environmental requirements.