IMPEL’s SWETE project (Safeguarding the Water Environment Throughout Europe) continues its work in 2019. This phase of the project will focus on risk analysis for sampling farms so that cross-compliance control can be performed. Cross-compliance is recognised among inspectors as a powerful tool to ensure compliance with environmental regulation because of the farmers’ risk of losing considerable amounts of their Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) payments.
Member States are required to carry out on-the-spot checks on at least 1 % of the total number of beneficiaries for which the competent control authority is responsible. The sample of farms to be checked shall be selected using a risk analysis. Rules about risk analysis for cross-compliance are defined by the Article 69 of the Commission Implementing Regulation (EC) No 809/2014.
In addition the project looks into the risk based control of livestock productions regulated by the Industrial Emissions Directive to explore possible common ground and inspiration.
Workshop
As part of this work, a dedicated workshop is organised on 19th and 20th September at the Danish Agricultural Agency in Copenhagen, Denmark. Further details on the registration procedure and workshop details are available here.
Previous work on nitrate diffuse pollution
Previous IMPEL projects about nitrate diffuse pollution have dealt with how to increase compliance by best practice for controlling measures of the Nitrates Directive. Key output of this series of projects was the development of the tool Good practice for tackling diffuse nitrate pollution from farms and farmsteads.