Under the terms and conditions of the 2001 area aid scheme, the applicant must ensure that only eligible land is included on his area aid application. The person named included two ineligible areas in his area aid application, comprising buildings, trees or other invalid land totalling some 0.25 hectares.
The herd owner applied for area aid in respect of a total of 14.07 hectares but after deducting the ineligible land, a valid area of 13.82 hectares has been determined which is 1.81 % less than the area claimed.
Under Article 9 of EU Regulation 3887/92, no penalty is applied when the difference is less than 3%. Therefore, in this case no area aid penalty was applied, leaving the area determined for payment purposes at 13.82 hectares.