Ajaccio (AFP)

Brussels doubts about the effectiveness of the fight against fraud to European agricultural aid in Corsica, after abuses found by Justice and a confidential report, may cost France 1.4 billion aid, penalizing farmers righteous across the country and taxpayers, have warned several sources on the island.

These abuses and the 40% anomalies - against 10% on the continent - in surface declarations to obtain European aid in 2018 led Brussels to ask for 653 island farm inspections, in addition to 200 already expected this year, according to the prefect of Corsica Josiane Chevalier.

A first level of control via aerial images has already made it possible to settle about 200 cases. But he also revealed anomalies requiring 650 field visits. The French State sent 25 controllers to complete everything before the end of the year.

The anomalies are "either areas declared excessive", or problems on the percentage of land suitable for grazing, according to Sabine Hofferer, regional director of food, agriculture and forest (Draaf) on the island.

"If you declare 10 hectares in the mountains and there are two hectares of pebbles where nothing grows, it is not eligible (as pasture), or if an asphalt road crosses a parcel, it must be excluded from the calculation of surface, "summarizes Hofferrer.

For its part, Brussels wants to ensure that the French authorities apply in Corsica the planned rules and has therefore launched a "compliance audit", still in progress, of the management and control systems put in place by France, by elsewhere indicated to AFP a source at the European Commission.

"The stakes are high," the prefect of Corsica told AFP: "if Europe is not convinced" of the effectiveness of controls, it could decide not to reimburse France 1.4 billion euros, ie all the aid for grazing land, said to be unproductive, in the 23 French departments - mountains and Mediterranean rim - which declare it.

Another risk is the complete cessation of these aids in the next Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).

The European Commission recalled on 4 November that it had "no tolerance" for CAP (Common Agricultural Policy) fraud, following a New York Times inquiry into how some politicians are capturing European aid in Eastern Europe .

- "Deadweight effect" -

The anti-fraud office of the European Union (Olaf), back on the island to carry out its own verifications, had already investigated in 2017 after a report from the anti-corruption association Anticor.

At the end of this survey, completed in June 2018, the organization had recommended to the European Commission to recover 536,500 euros "misused" between 2013 and 2017 for areas or beneficiaries ineligible for aid.

Its confidential investigation report, consulted by AFP, recalls the general context of these frauds: between 2014 and 2015, France and the European Commission agreed to re-evaluate the level of agricultural subsidies in Corsica, from 95 euros to 220 euros. per hectare, corresponding to the national average. The overall budget for European aid to Corsica thus jumped from 13.9 million euros in 2014 to 36 million euros per year over the period 2015-2020.

In Corsica, as in the departments concerned on this continent, this decision has been supplemented by the decision to integrate low productivity areas - maquis, forests, chestnut groves - with less than 50% of the area eligible for aid. grass, where pastoralists graze their animals.

This has "resulted in a windfall effect that has benefited a minority of breeders" in Corsica, says Olaf, which notes that thousands of island plots without landlord have facilitated "this drift". The organization also underlines that the fraudsters were able to rely "on the ambiguities" of the rules put in place by France and "the advised councils of the professional structures" like the chambers of agriculture.

"Some farmers have engaged in hunting per hectare" by declaring excessive surfaces, without having the means to exploit them and without the agreement of the real owners, denounces the Olaf. The result: a 35% increase in the area benefiting from aid in Corsica between 2014 and 2017, according to official figures.

The annual envelope of 36 million euros of aid is not extensible, the aid per hectare has mathematically declined to 184 euros in 2018, for all Corsican farmers, penalizing virtuous farmers.

- Risk of "losing everything" -

Anticor based on this European survey completed in 2018 to file complaints in Paris in December 2018 and May 2019, denouncing "misappropriation of massive agricultural public subsidies" committed with the complicity of the supervisory authorities ". The association figures fraud at "36 million euros" between 2015 and 2019.

On the island, five judicial investigations for suspicion of fraud with European aid are also in progress: one has concluded an overvaluation of the herd and hectares declared by the director of the Chamber of Agriculture of Corse-du-Sud and five relatives, for an estimated loss of 1.4 million euros.

Six people are summoned before the Ajaccio Criminal Court on April 7, 2020, to be tried for "organized fraud and organized money laundering", according to the Public Prosecutor's Office.

In Haute-Corse, four members of the family of a FDSEA leader are at the heart of another survey: they received 760,000 euros in European aid between 2015 and 2018, but only one would actually be a farmer, according to the prosecutor of Bastia.

Finally, three other investigations are under way in Corse-du-Sud, one of which is aimed at another person in charge of the departmental chamber of agriculture.

In Corsica, some 5,000 people work permanently in agriculture. Two thirds of the 2,810 farms on the island have animal production, the area where fraud and anomalies have been reported.

On the other hand, two-thirds of the value created by agriculture comes from crop production, led by wine (39%) and fruits (26%, mainly olives and citrus fruits), sectors in which there is no There are no anomalies on the surfaces, plantations being easier to control by aerial photos, says Sabine Hofferer.

"It is essential to make our management system reliable.Do not do it is risk losing everything in Corsica as elsewhere," acknowledged the Minister of Agriculture Didier Guillaume.

For Joseph Colombani, president of the Chamber of Agriculture of Haute-Corse, the anomalies are not frauds: "90% come from the change of rules" imposed by Brussels in Paris from 2018, which was not accepted by some of the breeders. Brussels then judged France too generous between 2015 and 2018 regarding pastoral areas eligible for aid and asked for "corrective measures".

In 2015, the European Commission had already asked France to return more than one billion euros of agricultural aid for the period 2008-2012, in particular for failures of the system of identification of eligible agricultural parcels.

France is the Member State that receives the most aid under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with € 63 billion out of a total budget of € 408.3 billion for the period 2014-2020, according to the figures from the European Commission.

© 2019 AFP