Common Agricultural Policy

• Year: 2022

COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY

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3. COMMON AGRICULTURAL POLICY

3.1. Introduction

Section 3 presents a statistical evaluation of irregularities and fraud detected by the Member

States in 2022 in expenditure under the common agricultural policy (CAP). It provides

context to these detections by looking at past years and relevant programming periods (PP).

Over 99% of expenditure under the common agricultural policy (CAP) is disbursed by

Member States under shared management. The Member States must report irregularities and

fraud to the Commission through the Irregularity Management System (IMS). When

reference is made to fraud, this includes both suspected and established fraud

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.

Non-fraudulent irregularities must be reported in IMS only when they are detected after the

expenditure has been introduced in a statement submitted to the Commission. Both fraudulent

and non-fraudulent irregularities must be reported only when involving financial amounts

above EUR 10 000. Several Member States also reported some irregularities under this

threshold.

For the purpose of communicating the following findings, CAP is split into two main parts:

(i) support to agriculture, which includes direct aid to farmers and market measures; (ii)

rural development. In general, the following findings refer to EU-27.

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3.2. General trend

Tables NR1 shows the number of fraudulent irregularities detected and reported by the

Member States, during the period 2018-2022, in relation to CAP. Table NR2 focuses on the

financial amounts involved. Fraudulent irregularities reported for rural development

increased, mainly due to rising detections for the programming period (PP) 2014-2020.

However, the number of these rural development fraudulent irregularities was lower than

during the previous programming period, despite the fact that the European Court of Auditors

considers that rural development has a higher risk of error than direct payments to farmers.

This situation should be monitored to ensure focus on fraud detection. In 2022, the fraudulent

irregularities under support to agriculture increased, compared to 2021, mainly due to

reporting related to direct payments by two Member States, which had not reported such

irregularities before, during the period 2018-2021. The increase was partly due to the

reporting of many irregularities below the EUR 10 000, which were interconnected and

exceeding the threshold where considered together.

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‘Suspected fraud’ means an irregularity that gives rise to the initiation of administrative or judicial

proceedings at national level in order to establish the presence of intentional behaviour, in particular fraud, as

referred to in Article 1(1)(a) of the Convention drawn up on the basis of Article K.3 of the Treaty on European

Union, on the protection of the European Co mmunities’ financial inter ests. Regardless o f the approach adopted

by each Member State, ratification of the 1995 Convention has equipped every country with a basis for

prosecuting and possibly imposing penalties for specific conducts. If this happens, i.e. a guilty verdict is issued

and is not appealed against, the case can be considered ‘established fraud’. More recently, the Directive (EU)

2017/1371 (so-called PIF Directive) defines what the Member States are requested to regard as fraud affecting

the EU’s financial interests.

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For the methodology to identify the irregularities related to direct payments to farmers, market measures and

rural development, please see Annex 12 to the ‘Statistical evaluation of irregularities repo rted for 2021: own

resources, agriculture, cohesion and fisheries policies, pre-accession and direct expenditure’, SWD(2022)307.