1. AAdopted Rural Development Programmes – implications for second RBMPs
Water Directors
27/05/2015
Pavel MISIGA
Head of Water Unit
Directorate General for Environment
European Commission 1

2. Integration of the WFD and FD into RDPs (2015-2021) ?
Brief analysis of new RDPs ( ) and short term opportunities for improvement
DG ENV checked draft RDPs for integration of WFD and FD objectives (big differences among MS)
made observations as part of the negotiation process that precedes adoption of final RDPs.
All MS still have opportunity to improve the contribution adopted RDPs play in delivering the WFD and FD objectives by :
Influencing the operational rules of the new RDPs
Seeking RDP modifications when RBMPs necessitate this 2 2 2 2

3. Issues checked in draft RDPs (questions derived from court of auditors recent report )
1. Have pressures on water been sufficiently included in the RDP? -some RDPs provide clear information on % of water bodies not achieving good status due to particular agriculture activities (but very few ref. to 2013 article 5 assessment, relying on old data instead) - However, almost none of the SWOTs consistently gave information on all aspects of agriculture pressures, failing to account for morphological alterations and quantitative pressures. - Many SWOTs did not provide information on where pressures were greatest within the program area - vital information that is needed for targeting -
Questions are those from the recent court of auditors report into CAP and WFD

4. 2. Have the EU’s water policy objectives and the MS needs in relation to water management been properly taken into account?
many MS are continuing to fail to properly integrate WFD and FD objectives into the RDP strategy.
"needs" section is often generic and the strategies for Priority 4b (Improving Water Management) did not address all the agriculture pressures on water .
overall strategy largely focused on economic improvements with few references to the WFD or FD
often unclear why pressures identified in the SWOT failed to then be addressed by suitable measures.

5. 3. Do the measures in the RDPs ensure water pressures are addressed and negative side-effects on water are avoided?
- measure packages showed improvement from previous programming period but significant progress is still needed.
However not all pressures identified in the SWOT were sufficiently addressed by the measures or measures were completely missing, or ill conceived (e.g. expanding irrigation to deal with drought)
While there appeared to be an increase in natural water retention measures, there is still a lot of support for hard defence measures.

6. Measure 4 irrigation & Article 46 Issues identified included:
- MS with significant gaps in water body status assessment not setting out how they would fill the gaps before irrigation projects commenced
MS not requiring abstraction permits to be reviewed to be WFD compliant before irrigation projects were commenced
lack of methodology to determine how water savings would be calculated/ their return to the water body measured.
Non-ambitious levels of water savings
improvements have been made through consultation- measure likely to be subject to audit and therefore water agencies should cooperate with agri

7. - Baseline for agri-environment schemes - lack of attention to restrictions on phosphorus is widespread. MS also failed to indicate how far along they were with implementing the Pesticides Directive, not including any information on their action plans. - adds further support to the need to identify WFD and SUD measures for inclusion in cross-compliance. - Completely missing from all the RDPs was the use of M12 (Art. 30) on payments due to implementation of WFD mandatory measures.

8. 4. Do the monitoring and evaluation system enable a clear assessment of impacts of programme on water pressures? - CoA report found that the CAP monitoring and evaluation systems are of limited use as regards water-related information. - This analysis of RDPs found no substantial changes to the CMEF to take on board the CoA recommendations. - Indicators have remained the same, thus water quantity and morphology cannot be assessed, nor have the RDPs indicated how they link their RDP monitoring with the WFD and FD monitoring systems.

9. 5. Have rural development funds been used sufficiently to respond to water concerns? - The financing of measures and determining the share of the budget going towards water issues is not possible as the RDPs have indicated that all agri-environmental measures are multi-objective and cannot be solely linked to one priority. - Despite this, the majority of Member States are allocating more money to Priority 4 (environment) than to Priority 2 (on economic competiveness) which suggests a positive support for the environment. - The impact of spending on priority 5 is more difficult to discern.

10. Opportunities for improvement in the short term
2nd RBMPs must include
sufficient detail on all agriculture pressures - quality , quantity, morphology (only where this is precise, can it then be precisely reflected in RDPs)
Complete water body status assessments (crucial for proper application of article 46 rules)
Comprehensive gap analysis to show scale and type of RDP measures needed to bridge the gap to good status
Mandatory measures for farmers which allow M12 to be used
Changes to pricing policy in agriculture to ensure it complies with article 9 – and complies with EAC 5.2

11. WFD compliant Abstraction Permits - these should be in place before any new irrigation project is commenced
When changes are made to the agriculture basic measures (to control diffuse pollution and abstraction), agri- environment measures will have to be reviewed and made more ambitious
Up ambition on restoration of morphological impacts through natural water retention measures to meet both WFD, FD objectives
(these can reduce the reliance on disaster relief payments in RDPs)
RDPs should not define the ambition of water policy: the RBMPs should set out the full scale of what is needed and seek progressively to integrate this into RDPs.