Ms Sinéad McPhillips:

It means that the proposal adds recognition of the national requirement when the conditionality standards are being set. We negotiated with the Commission for our own GAEC 2 standard in order that we could take account of national requirements for the protection of peat soils without having to duplicate that in the GAEC standard. We asked for more subsidiarity in setting our GAEC standards, including the ability to derogate from GAEC 2 on the basis that there were existing national and other EU regulations that covered those points, but the Commission made it clear that that was a red line and that GAEC 2 had to remain.

It has added this recognition of national standards when the GAEC 2 standards are being set.