Pursuant to Article 52 of Regulation (EU) No 1307/2013 Member States may grant coupled support to farmers under the conditions laid down in Chapter 1 of Title IV of that Regulation and in a delegated act to be adopted by the Commission.

In accordance with Article 53(4) of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 639/2014, where the coupled support measure concerns bovine animals and/or sheep and goats, Member States have to define as an eligibility condition for the support, the requirements to identify and register animals provided for in Regulation (EC) No 1760/2000 of the European Parliament and of the Council or Council Regulation (EC) No 21/2004 respectively. As a consequence, an animal not complying with those identification and registration requirements once will remain ineligible for voluntary coupled support for its whole life, regardless the correction of the failure afterwards.

In order to remedy such situations, Article 117 of Council Regulation (EC) No 73/2009 provided that in the case of beef and veal payments an animal was to be considered as eligible if the information required was made available to the competent authority on the first day of the retention period of the animal.

Due to the fact that beef and veal payments have been abolished and given that the retention period is no longer an eligibility condition for voluntary coupled support, Article 53(4) of Delegated Regulation (EU) No 639/2014 does not contain a similar provision.

However, in order to ensure proportionality and without prejudice to other applicable eligibility conditions fixed by the Member State, bovine animals should be considered as eligible for support as long as the identification and registration requirements are complied with by a certain date. For the sake of consistency, that rule should also apply in the case of sheep and goats.

This Regulation should apply with respect to livestock aid applications relating to calendar year 2015 and subsequent years,