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Cross compliance

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Cross Compliance in the context of the Common Agricultural Policy sets out environmental and other standards that farmers must adhere to in order to receive agricultural subsidies.

Glossary

Glossary
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cattle grazing

Cross compliance is a European Union (EU) requirement setting out standards that farmers have to meet in order to receive the Single Farm Payment (SFP).

There are two elements to Cross Compliance

They are:

  • Statutory Management Requirements (SMRs) - These are mainly existing EU obligations covering environmental, public health , plant health and animal health and welfare standards
     
  • Standards consistent with keeping land in "Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition" (GAEC)

Failure to meet any of the Cross Compliance standards could result in a financial penalty being imposed on your Single Farm Payment and Rural Development area based schemes entered into from 1 January 2007.

The payment reduction matrix used for calculating the level of financial penalty has been updated following an EU audit of Rural Payments Wales. The EU deemed that reductions applied in previous years were too lenient. Therefore, reductions applied in 2009 will generally be applied at three percent for the majority of Cross Compliance breaches found.