Acquisition of satellite data
Article 12
1. For the purposes of Article 24 of Regulation (EU) 2021/2116, each Member State shall inform the Commission before 1 November of the calendar year preceding the year of the performance of the quality assessment of the area monitoring system, about its specification on the acquisition of the satellite data in respect to: (a) the population of parcels per intervention from which the quality assessment sample will be selected; (b) the timetable for obtaining the satellite data for the eligibility conditions of the intervention on the selected parcels. 2. For the purposes of paragraph 1, point (a), Member States shall draw the population of parcels for the quality assessment sample based on the aid applications of the year preceding the calendar year of the quality assessment. The population of the parcels for which satellite data is requested may be updated in the calendar year of the quality assessment for parcels that, following the aid applications of the calendar year concerned, are not relevant anymore for a given intervention or for parcels under interventions for which aid was not applied for the previous year. 3. The Commission shall finalise the agreement with the Member State concerned on the information referred to in paragraph 1, points (a) and (b), before 15 January following the communication of information referred to in paragraph 1. 4. The competent authorities or bodies representing them referred to in Article 24 of Regulation (EU) 2021/2116 must observe the provisions on copyright set out in the contracts with the suppliers. 5. If the total requests received by Member States exceed the budget available for the application of Article 24 of Regulation (EU) 2021/2116, the Commission shall decide on a limitation of the satellite data to be provided, aiming at the most efficient use of the available resources. In addition, where Member States add parcels during the calendar year to the population for the quality assessment of the area monitoring system, the Commission may not be able to acquire all relevant imagery.