1. In order to ensure that products bought in under public intervention or subject to aid for private storage are suitable for long-term storage and are of sound, fair and marketable quality, and in order to take into account the specific characteristics of the different sectors for the purposes of ensuring the cost-effective operation of public intervention and private storage, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 227 laying down the requirements and conditions to be met by those products, in addition to the requirements laid down in this Regulation. Those requirements and conditions shall aim to guarantee, for the products bought in and stored:
(a)
their quality with respect to quality parameters, quality groups, quality grades, categories, product characteristics and age;
(b)
their eligibility with respect to quantities, packaging including labelling, preservation, previous storage contracts, approval of undertakings and the stage of the products to which the public intervention price and the aid for private storage applies.
2. In order to take account of the specific characteristics of the cereals and paddy rice sectors, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 227 laying down the quality criteria as regards both buying-in and sales of common wheat, durum wheat, barley, maize and paddy rice.
3. In order to ensure appropriate storage capacity and the efficiency of the public intervention system in terms of cost-effectiveness, distribution and access for operators, and in order to maintain the quality of products bought in under public intervention for their disposal at the end of the storage period, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 227 laying down:
(a)
the requirements to be fulfilled by storage places for all products subject to public intervention;
(b)
rules on the storage of products inside and outside the Member State responsible for them and for the treatment of such products as regards customs duties and any other amounts to be granted or levied under the CAP.
4. In order to ensure that aid for private storage has the desired effect on the market, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 227 laying down:
(a)
rules and conditions applicable where the quantity stored is lower than the contracted quantity;
(b)
the conditions for granting an advance payment of such aid;
(c)
the conditions under which it may be decided that products covered by private storage contracts may be re-marketed or disposed of.
5. In order to ensure the proper functioning of the public intervention and private storage systems, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 227:
(a)
providing for the use of tendering procedures guaranteeing equal access to goods and equal treatment of operators;
(b)
laying down the additional conditions to be fulfilled by operators in order to facilitate the effective management and control of the system for Member States and operators;
(c)
laying down the requirement for operators to lodge a security guaranteeing the fulfilment of their obligations.
6. In order to take account of technical developments and of the needs of sectors referred to in Article 10, as well as of the need to standardise the presentation of the different products for the purposes of improving market transparency, price recording and the application of the market intervention measures, the Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 227:
(a)
adapting and updating the provisions of Annex IV on the Union scales for the classification, identification and presentation of carcasses;
(b)
laying down supplementary provisions relating to classification, including by qualified classifiers, to grading, including by automated grading techniques, to identification, weighing and marking of carcasses and to the calculation of average Union prices and to the weighting coefficients used in the calculation of those prices;
(c)
laying down, in the beef and veal sector, derogations from provisions and specific derogations which may be granted by Member States to slaughterhouses in which few bovine animals are slaughtered, and additional provisions for the products concerned, including regarding the classes of conformation and fat cover and, in sheepmeat sector, further provisions as regards weight, colour of meat and fat cover and the criteria for the classification of light lambs;
(d)
providing Member States with the authorisation not to apply the grading scale for classification of pig carcasses and the authorisation to use assessment criteria in addition to weight and estimated lean-meat content, or laying down derogations from that scale.