Changes to BPS Penalty System

The Agriculture Commissioner, Phil Hogan, has announced changes to make the CAP penalty system more tolerant.  As from 2017 there will be a period of up to 35 days following submission in which claimants will be able to make changes to their application without any penalty at all.  In addition, there will be a maximum penalty of 1.5 times the area over declared.  Finally, there will be a ‘yellow card system’.  This will be used for the first breach, if it is of a minor nature i.e less than 10% of the area declared, the penalty will be reduced by 50%.  The announcements were made at the European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee.  Further measures are expected to be announced later in the year once the Greening consultation has been completed.  It remains to be seen how useful the 35 days is.  In theory it does give a claimant an extra 35 days to complete their application as long as it has been submitted in some form on time, although the devil may be in the detail.  But the more tolerant penalty system might allow some to sleep easier at night as currently fairly small errors can lead to pretty large penalties being applied.