Article 16Obligation to carry out checks

1. The competent authorities shall carry out checks within their territory to establish whether operators and traders established in the Union comply with this Regulation. The competent authorities shall carry out checks within their territory to establish whether the relevant products that the operator or trader has placed or intends to place on the market, has made available or intends to make available on the market or has exported or intends to export comply with this Regulation.

2. The checks referred to in paragraph 1 of this Article shall be carried out in accordance with Articles 18 and 19.

3. The competent authorities shall use a risk-based approach to identify the checks to be carried out. Risk criteria shall be identified based on an analysis of risks of non-compliance with this Regulation, taking into account in particular the relevant commodities, the complexity and the length of supply chains, including whether mixing of relevant products is involved, and the stage of processing of the relevant product, whether the plots of land concerned are adjacent to forests, the assignment of risk to countries or parts thereof in accordance with Article 29, paying special attention to the situation of countries or parts thereof classified as high risk, the history of non-compliance of operators or traders with this Regulation, risks of circumvention, and any other relevant information. The analysis of risks shall build on the information referred to in Articles 9 and 10 and may build on the information contained in the information system referred to in Article 33, and may be supported by other relevant sources such as monitoring data, risk profiles from international organisations, substantiated concerns submitted under Article 31, or the conclusions of Commission expert group meetings.

4. The Commission shall, where appropriate, establish and regularly review and update indicative risk criteria at Union level, in accordance with paragraph 3, and communicate them to competent authorities.

5. For the purposes of carrying out the checks referred to in paragraph 1, the competent authorities shall establish annual plans containing at least the following:

(a)

national risk criteria, established in accordance with paragraph 3, for the purpose of determining the checks that are necessary, which build upon any indicative risk criteria at Union level established by the Commission in accordance with paragraph 4, and systematically include risk criteria in relation to countries or parts thereof classified as high risk;

(b)

the selection of operators and traders to be checked; that selection is to be based on the national risk criteria referred to in point (a), using, inter alia, information contained in the information system referred to in Article 33 and electronic data-processing techniques; for each operator or trader to be checked, competent authorities may identify specific due diligence statements to be checked.

6. The annual review of the plans by the competent authorities shall systematically build upon the results of the checks and the experience on implementation of the plans referred to in paragraph 5 in order to improve their effectiveness.

7. Competent authorities shall communicate their plans of checks, as well as updates thereto, to other competent authorities and the Commission. Competent authorities shall exchange information on and coordinate the development and application of the risk criteria referred to in paragraph 5 with competent authorities of other Member States and with the Commission, in order to improve the effectiveness of the enforcement of this Regulation.

8. Each Member State shall ensure that the annual checks carried out by its competent authorities pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Article cover at least 3 % of the operators placing or making available on the market or exporting relevant products that contain or have been made using relevant commodities produced in a country of production or parts thereof classified as standard risk in accordance with Article 29.

9. Each Member State shall ensure that the annual checks carried out by its competent authorities pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Article cover at least 9 % of the operators placing or making available on the market or exporting relevant products that contain or have been made using relevant commodities as well as 9 % of the quantity of each of the relevant products that contain or have been made using relevant commodities produced in a country or parts thereof classified as high risk in accordance with Article 29.

10. Each Member State shall ensure that the annual checks carried out by its competent authorities pursuant to paragraph 1 of this Article cover at least 1 % of the operators placing or making available on the market or exporting relevant products that contain or have been made using relevant commodities produced in a country or parts thereof classified as low risk in accordance with Article 29.

The article continues in the official text.