A delegation from the European Commission Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development (EC DG AGRI) has recently visited Vilnius, Lithuania and met the representatives of the National Paying Agency (NPA) and the Ministry of Agriculture. During the meeting, the NPA presented the work done on implementation of the Area monitoring system (AMS) in Lithuania through EU funded H2020 projects: NIVA, RECAP, DIONE, ENVISION, EO4AGRI, CAPCON and CEF project: OPEN IACS, also European Space Agency funded Sen4CAP project.
The NPA is in the second year of preparation for the implementation of the AMS. The new monitoring system is expected to become fully operational in Lithuania by 2022.
The main advantages of the AMS – it will reduce not only the costs of control incurred by the NPA, but also the administrative burden on farmers. In addition, this new system will open up the data used in the EU and Lithuanian assistance’ administration and control processes, which will ensure full transparency of decision-making. The obtained data will be used to effectively manage the farm and, most importantly, will give farmers the opportunity to correct non-compliances (they will be informed about the identified non-compliances in advance) and thus the number of sanctions will be reduced.
