shall mean the departments or bodies accredited by the Member States as paying agencies which fulfil the conditions laid down in Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 1306/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council.
6.At the end of the contractual storage period, the authority responsible for checking shall, in respect of at least one half of the number of contracts, by sampling, verify weight and identification of the products in storage. For the purposes of this check, the contracting party shall inform the competent body, indicating the storage lots involved, at least five working days before:
(a)the end of the maximum contractual storage period; or
(b)the start of removal operations where the products are removed before the expiry of the maximum contractual storage period.
The Member States may accept a shorter time limit than five working days.