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Abstract
EU farmers face increasing requests to comply with legal as well as private agribusiness and
retail standards. Both requests potentially raise farmer’s administrative burden. This paper
discusses the potential synergies between cross-compliance and third-party certification
schemes. In selected aspects cross-compliance and several certification schemes ask similar
measures. However, both regulatory approaches differ considerably in other areas. The
heterogeneous nature of the various certification schemes in place prevent a general
conclusion. As a tendency systemic standards like organic agriculture provide the largest
overlap with cross-compliance. Certificates of origin, on the opposite side, have no relation
with cross-compliance.