The relaxation in aid control systems and the lack of coordination between administrations are making it easier for farmers and companies in the agricultural sector involved or even convicted of crimes against the environment to receive aid and subsidies under the Community Agricultural Policy ( CAP), an instrument of the European Union whose 2021 reform includes as one of its three main objectives "support and strengthen environmental protection."
The correct application of the CAP regulations would avoid paradoxes such as the collection of European subsidies by farmers convicted or implicated for the extraction of water in the Doñana area or the death of bearded vultures in Asturias, to give two recent examples, as stated. the four organizations in the environmental sector that have launched an action demanding "coordination between the MAPA [Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food] and the environmental prosecutor's office to avoid irregularities in CAP payments."
The Community Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a key and necessary instrument to develop a resilient, competitive and sustainable productive system but, "to receive aid and direct payments within the framework of the CAP, agricultural holdings must meet a series of Requirements Legal and Good Agro-Environmental Conditions (BCAM) called reinforced conditionality", recall the four reference foundations in the environmental sector (Global Nature Foundation, Foundation for the conservation of the Bearded Vulture, Oso Pardo Foundation and Nature and Man Foundation) that have come together to demand greater control of the CAP to ensure environmental protection.
The joint work of these entities is launched "after detecting that systemic fraud is being committed in relation to these public funds due to the existence of a lax penalty regime and the lack of administrative coordination between the environmental prosecutor's office and the paying bodies and coordinators of said CAP regime".
For this reason, and with the aim of improving the penalty regime of the CAP conditionality and stopping and detecting these pockets of fraud, the four entities urgently request the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) to ask the Autonomous Communities that cross-check data with the environmental prosecutor's office to comply with the reinforced conditionality in PEPAC 23-27.
In this context, the environmental entities promoting this action assure that the requested actions "are necessary to achieve the true purpose of the reinforced conditionality regime, to stop non-compliance with the CAP and prevent fraud of public funds."
The four foundations are working to make the problem detected known to public administrations and members of the European Parliament and Commission to identify the problem and promote the implementation of the technical and legal solutions necessary to stop the existing impunity.
For this reason, the four entities insist that the paying body and the coordinator should cross-check data with the environmental prosecutor's office and act ex officio to establish the pertinent penalties, and this has been communicated to them so that they can explain whether in this case and in other similar cases they have proceeded. this way. For these four foundations, a CAP should be achieved that improves the agricultural and livestock sector of our country, and that benefits those who comply with good environmental practices and the legal requirements established by conditionality, while adequately sanctioning all those actors who They fail to comply with environmental legislation.
Along these lines, the associations are going to write to the state coordinating body, the Spanish Agrarian Guarantee Fund, FEGA, to request a technical working meeting to improve the sanctioning regime of the CAP and achieve the due institutional collaboration that must be achieved. between both sectors, the purpose established in this area.
