The Court of Justice of the European Union endorses withdrawing five million in agricultural aid improperly granted in Spain

The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) this Thursday rejected Spain’s appeal against the decision of the European Commission not to pay five million euros in agricultural aid granted in Andalusia and Catalonia after detecting deficiencies in their management and control systems.

The aid in question was made from the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund (EAGF) in 2016 and 2017 and was allocated to the bovine sector in Andalusia and Catalonia, but in 2018 the European Commission opened an investigation that detected deficiencies in their control systems regarding the calculation of aid, the quality of on-the-spot checks and the number of them.

The Spanish authorities questioned these errors and initiated a conciliation process with the community Executive after which it decided to exclude five million euros of this aid from EAGF financing on the grounds that it had been granted in breach of Community law.

Spain appealed the decision, with the support of France, before the General Court of the EU, which in 2023 ruled in favor of the European Commission. The Spanish authorities They then filed an appeal against this verdict. before the CJEU, the highest community judicial instance.

The Court, based in Luxembourg, today dismissed that appeal and rejected the allegations presented by Spain.

The CJEU rejects that the General Court’s ruling suffered from a lack of motivation and the alleged errors committed by it and points out that Spain does not precisely identify the errors it invokes or does not present legal grounds that specifically support its challenge.

Also consider that The Court was right to dismiss the Spanish allegations that the Commission had violated the principle of proportionality and affirms that Spain has not presented any arguments to support that its right to defense was violated.

In addition, declares inadmissible the allegations that the General Court violated the principles of legal certainty and legality, while rejecting those relating to the violation of the right to effective judicial protection.

The CJEU emphasizes that Spain did not question the data on the error rate in the controls in Catalonia and that the General Court cannot be criticized for declaring that Spain had committed an infringement.

In this sense, it recalls that the Commission must not exhaustively demonstrate the insufficiency of the controls carried out by the national administrations or the irregularity of the figures transmitted by them, but rather provide an element of proof of serious and reasonable doubt with respect to those controls or figures.

Therefore, it was up to Spain to explain in detail and completely the reality of its controls and, where appropriate, the inaccuracy of the Commission’s statements, but Spain limited itself to formulating allegations, without exposing legal basespoints out the Court.