2454 final report.pdf - Agra CEAS Consulting

Evaluation of the Community Plant Health Regime: Final Report
DG SANCO Evaluation Framework Contract Lot 3 (Food Chain)
for solidarity dossiers where the origin of the contamination is not clearly identified, it
may be difficult to decide on the responsibility or non-responsibility of the MS (this
problem is compounded by the exclusion of natural spread from current provisions);
The eligible costs only represent a small proportion of the total costs of an outbreak.
The exclusion of major cost items such as production losses is a major disincentive.
Notifications on the identification of new HOs in a given zone and presence of not known and
not (yet) listed organisms is delayed by the absence of incentive to notify for 1) the
farmers/growers to the NPPOs and 2) the NPPOs to the EC. This point leads to the conclusion
that, by the time the EU receives notifications of outbreak, the pest is already quite well
established. The main incentive for speeding up notifications is financial, i.e. more solidarity
funding on the one hand and more penalties for late action on the other hand.
It was also noted that the CPHR does not contain any other incentives for the MS and for the
stakeholders, such as the legal liability within the production and trade chain.
Several respondents to the general survey and interviewees also indicated the lack of
disincentives to act against the specific objectives of the CPHR, such as the legal possibility
of banning the movement of specified commodities from areas or countries not complying
with adopted rules, or the effective enforcement of penalties for failure to act.
In conclusion, the evaluation has confirmed the results of the earlier (2008) evaluation of the
solidarity regime, in that the incentives provided by the regime remain relatively limited in a
number of areas (intervention ex-post; exclusion of production losses; difficulty of assigning
responsibility, particularly in cases of natural spread; lack of disincentives; non effective
enforcement of penalties), for which there is still considerable room for improvement of the
solidarity regime.
3.11.7.2 MS compensation schemes
In terms of the sharing of responsibilities and costs at MS level, the government and/or
industry sectors have developed mechanisms in several MS to provide assistance in case of
outbreak.
The sharing of costs can either be retrospective (i.e. after the outbreak) or prospective (i.e. in
advance of the outbreak).
In the first case, it mainly refers to compensation paid by Government after the outbreak 231 . A
budget may have been foreseen in the State budget to that aim or not. Such schemes exist in
11 MS: BG, CZ, CY, ES, FI, HU, LT, LV, PL, PT and SI.
231 Any substantial support by a MS to small and medium-sized enterprises active in the production of
agricultural products must be granted within a State aid framework that ensures Commission control and avoids
distortions of competition. Aids to provide compensation for the losses incurred by plant pests and diseases and
aids to prevent future losses may only be permitted by the Commission on the basis of Article 87 (3) (c) of the
Treaty which provides that aid to facilitate the development of certain activities may be considered compatible
with the common market provided that it does not affect trading conditions to an extent contrary to the common
interest. Unilateral State aid measures which simply seek to improve the financial situation of producers but
Food Chain Evaluation Consortium 246