Is Cross Compliance an Effective Policy?

European Court of Auditors, 2008

Background

• farmers need to comply with minimum environmental, sanitary and animal welfare requirements in order to obtain the Single Farm Payment

Findings

• The cross compliance objectives are underspecified and neither the Commission nor the member states monitor their effectiveness
• they overlap with compulsory obligations (so that many farmers do not have to undertake any action beyond respecting the law)
• some member states have failed to specify the vague EU cross-compliance conditions so as to make them fully operational within their borders
• member states control cross-compliance with insufficient frequency and excessive laxity (finding not a single infringement in thousands of controls for important conditions), and they impose ludicrous sanctions.

Comment

• The single farm payment is increasingly being justified by reference to the delivery of public goods via cross compliance. The Court of Auditors has written the death certificate of this far-fetched justification.