Keywords
Summary

Keywords

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Agriculture ° EAGGF ° Clearance of accounts ° Amounts to be paid to the Fund by a Member State by way of the co-responsibility levy in the cereals sector ° Commission' s power to supervise the correct application of agricultural rules ° Recourse to comparison of the accounts presented with statistical data ° Whether permissible ° Reasonable doubt ° Burden of proof on the Member State ° Substitution of statistical data for the accounts presented ° Not permissible

(Council Regulation No 729/70, Arts 5 and 9)

Summary

Where, in the context of the procedure for clearing EAGGF accounts, in respect of which there is nothing in either the preamble to or the provisions of Regulation No 729/70 to indicate that the procedure should differ according to whether it relates to expenditure to be financed or revenue to be collected by the Fund, the Commission intends to reject the figures communicated by a Member State on the ground that the Community rules on expenditure and on revenue, such as the co-responsibility levy in the cereals sector, applicable in the various sectors of the common agricultural policy, have not been correctly applied by the national authorities, the Commission is not required to demonstrate exhaustively that there are irregularities in the data submitted to it; it is sufficient for it to adduce evidence of serious and reasonable doubt on its part regarding the figures submitted by the national authorities. The reason for this mitigation of the burden of proof on the Commission is that it is the Member State which is best placed to collect and verify the data required for the clearance of the accounts, hence it is for that State to adduce the most detailed and comprehensive evidence that its figures are accurate and, if appropriate, that the Commission' s calculations are incorrect.

Where the Commission finds a discrepancy between the accounts and the statistical data presented by a Member State, which, having regard to their nature and their objectives, are inevitably approximate and can reflect the actual state of affairs only with a limited degree of precision, it cannot purely and simply reject those accounts and effect clearance on the basis of the statistical data. Such data are valid only as an indirect means of verification, within the meaning of Article 9(1) of Regulation No 729/70, on the basis of which the Commission is entitled to rely on reasonable doubt which obliges the Member State to adduce evidence of its compliance with the Community rules and of the existence of a reliable supervisory system of such a kind as to dispel such doubt.