EU farm funds: on plots under half a hectare, the owner's consent is signed by whoever collects the aid
20 October 2026, 18:32
Today Agea, the public agency that coordinates payments of European Union farm aid in Italy, invited landowners to use the IO app, the Italian government's public-services app. The plan: an alert on the phone when one of their plots is entered in someone else's farm file, the record in which a farming business lists the fields it works. The agency gives the reason itself: not all owners have a farm file, and their land can be declared by others to obtain European money they are not entitled to. When the alerts will start, Agea does not say.
Five days earlier the television programme Le Iene had covered the case of Roio del Sangro, in the province of Chieti: around 90 hectares, split into hundreds of land-registry plots belonging to around 200 people, which ended up in one business's farm file. Several owners say they never signed the loan-for-use agreements that appear in the paperwork. The first complaint to prosecutors dates from July 2022: the allegations have yet to be proven, and local reports give no outcome.
How does someone else's field get into a farm file? The file is updated by an agricultural assistance centre, the office authorised to manage it, at the farmer's request. The owner receives no notice at all.
On the smallest plots, not even an agreement is needed. Decree-Law 91 of 2014, article 1-bis, paragraph 12, states that for land «of less than 5,000 square metres» in mountain areas, in the Alpine foothills and on non-irrigated plains, farmers «are not required to hold the relevant title of tenure». For aid purposes, under a circular issued last December and pending a ministerial decree, Agea accepts a declaration: the land is farmed with the owners' consent, by virtue of possession that is «peaceful, open and uninterrupted and has never been challenged by those entitled». The assistance centre must «check that the form has been filled in correctly». Nothing is asked of the owner: that the owner has never objected is declared by the person using the land.
The exemption has a reason, set out in Agea's circulars: not to halt farming businesses in mountain municipalities. The national information system, however, raises an automatic alert when the same plot appears in two farm files. If the owner has no farm file, like the heir to a field in the hills, that alert stays silent. When the plot also appears in the file of the person entitled to it, the European aid stays frozen for both, until one of them removes it, a court decides or Agea steps in. And yet the European Commission, in its 2021 guidelines cited by the European Court of Auditors, called for checks that did not stop at double claims on the same land.
So who pays? In Italy, in the 2025 financial year, direct payments, the aid linked to declared hectares, exceeded €3.47 billion. This is European money, funded by the member states' contributions, Italy included. Whoever declares a plot without the owner's knowledge collects part of that money with no right to it.
The place for a remedy already exists: it is the ministerial decree Agea is waiting for, provided for by Law 182 of 2025 to set the rules of the exemption and the «reporting obligations» of those who use it. The question is for Agea: if it knows that anyone without a farm file cannot notice anything, why does the declaration of consent go only to the assistance centre, and never to the person who owns the land?
The owner, meanwhile, is left with an app to download and an alert with no start date.
This article was prompted by a news item published in ANSA on 20 October 2026.