Advance payments
Article 26
1. Beneficiaries of support under Articles 45, 46, 50, 51 and 52 of Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013, respectively, may request the payment of an advance from the competent paying agencies, if this option is included in the national support programme in accordance with Article 49 of Delegated Regulation (EU) 2016/1149. 2. The amount of advances shall not exceed 80 % of the Union contribution. 3. The advance shall be paid on condition that the beneficiary has lodged a bank guarantee or an equivalent security at least equal to the amount of that advance in favour of the Member State in accordance with Chapter IV of Delegated Regulation (EU) No 907/2014. 4. For the purposes of Article 23 of Delegated Regulation (EU) No 907/2014, the obligation shall be to spend the total amount advanced in the implementation of the operation concerned by the end of the second financial year following the financial year during which the advance was paid, except in cases of force majeure and other exceptional circumstances. 5. As regards the restructuring and conversion of vineyards, the period referred to in paragraph 4 may be adjusted by the Member State in cases where: (a) the surfaces concerned are part of an area which has suffered a natural disaster within the meaning of Article 2(9) of Regulation (EU) No 702/2014 or an adverse climatic event which can be assimilated to a natural disaster within the meaning of Article 2(16) of that Regulation recognised by the competent authorities of the Member State concerned; (b) planned operations cannot be implemented because the plant material suffers health problems which have been certified by a body recognised by the Member State concerned. In order for the support to be paid in advance, any previous action carried out on the same area, for which the producer also received support in advance, must have been fully implemented. 6. The security shall be released when the competent paying agency establishes that the amount of actual expenditure corresponding to the Union contribution related to the operations concerned exceeds the amount of the advance.