January 30, 2018

On January 17, 2018, the Directorate-General for Rural Development and Forestry Policy of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Environment, as the Managing Authority of the National Rural Development Program, received approval from the European Commission for the proposed strategic modification of the 2014-2020 National Rural Development Program managed by said unit.

The main changes made to the PNDR, which will streamline the implementation of European and national funds in rural areas, can be divided into the following areas:

Transfers of financial allocation between already planned measures.

Part of the proposed modification focuses on making the necessary financial allocation adjustments after the first few years of implementing the measures.

Introduction of improvements to the monitoring and evaluation of PNDR actions.

Priority 3, on the organization of the food chain, which accounts for the bulk of the PNDR's budget allocation, has been restructured. A new focal area has been created to provide an appropriate framework for monitoring and evaluating this priority, which concentrates the actions carried out through the Priority Associative Entities (EAP). This modification will allow for more precise and realistic evaluations. It will also help highlight the importance of the policy to promote associative integration at the national level, giving greater and better visibility to these actions and their effectiveness within the PNDR.

Bug fixes in setting milestones for the Performance Framework.
Errors detected in the establishment of milestones have been corrected, using a methodology for their establishment that will allow the specificities of each of the measures included in the PNDR to be taken into account, based on the way each measure is implemented.

The approval process can be summarized in the following steps listed in chronological order:

- On October 13, the Managing Authority of the 2014-2020 National Rural Development Program sent the proposed amendment to the Monitoring Committee and the Executive Committee, which are responsible for studying and assessing the proposal.

- Following the participation and consultation process, on December 15, 2017, the Managing Authority sent the new National Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 to the European Commission for approval. Finally, on January 17, 2018, the Directorate-General for Rural Development and Forestry Policy of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Food and Environment received approval for this amendment from the European institution, through Implementing Decision C(2018)/369 of January 17, 2018.

The modified PNDR can be consulted at this link.