Two days after auditors highlighted shortcomings in the mapping systems EU member states use to distribute funds to farmers under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), another report from the European Court of Auditors (ECA) has warned that central EU bodies don’t have enough information to ensure that conditions placed on EU funds are being honoured in the 28 member states.

An investigation into cross-compliance measures, aimed at ensuring that agriculture policy is being implemented in a uniform way across the whole bloc, revealed that the EU Commission only has a “partial view” of the system. The measures are intended to ensure farmers’ compliance with basic rules for the environment, food safety, animal health and welfare, and good agricultural and environmental conditions (GAEC), and apply to the 7.5 million European farmers who in 2015 received approximately €47 billion in public money.

On Thursday, auditors who visited semi-autonomous regions of three member states (Schleswig-Holstein in Germany, Catalonia in Spain and Northern Ireland in the UK) concluded that the EU executive “cannot be sure” whether farmers are honouring their obligations, and whether the system they designed “is contributing to a more sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture in the EU,” based on current performance indicators.

Auditors found that the Commission’s system identifies neither the reason for infringements of its basic standards, nor any means of addressing these breaches, and that penalties for similar infractions can vary between member states.

They found that, despite changes introduced as part of the latest CAP reform process, cross-compliance can be simplified further, and suggested that similar GAEC requirements and greening conditions are being checked under different control systems, which could lead to duplications, higher burdens on CAP administrators and more bureaucracy for farmers.

The auditors are pushing the Commission to improve information sharing with the member states and central European bodies, and make sure penalties for breaching cross compliance measures are the same throughout Europe (and that they take into account the severity and extent of infractions, how permanent they are and whether they occurred intentionally or not). With the next set of CAP reforms set to come into effect in 2020, auditors said the Commission needs to develop measures to assess the cost-effectiveness of cross-compliance systems and checks; there is currently no reliable estimate of the overall cost of cross-compliance.

Nikolaos Milionis, an ECA auditor who contributed to the report, said on Thursday, “7.5 million farmers are subject to the cross-compliance rules. But the Commission currently cannot be sure whether the system is [working].”