The Copernicus component is governed by Regulation (EU) No 2021/696 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing the Union Space Programme and the European Union Agency for the Space Programme and repealing Regulations (EU) No 912/2010, (EU) No 1285/2013 and (EU) No 377/2014 and Decision No 541/2014/EU. Within the Copernicus component, a portfolio of land monitoring activities has been delegated by the European Union to the European Environment Agency (EEA) and the DG Joint Research Centre of the European Commission.

The Copernicus land monitoring products and services are made available on a principle of full, open and free access, as established by the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) No 1159/2013 of 12 July 2013.

Free, full and open access to the products and services of the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service is made on the conditions that:

1. When distributing or communicating Copernicus Land Monitoring Service products and services (data, software scripts, web services, user and methodological documentation and similar) to the public, users shall inform the public of the source of these products and services.

2. Where the Copernicus Land Monitoring Service products and services have been adapted or modified by the user, the user shall clearly state this.

3. Users shall make sure not to convey the impression to the public that the user's activities are officially endorsed by the European Union.

Presence of perennial snow and glaciers is to be expected in products.

Haze: acceptability assessed by EEA.

The sun elevation angle is higher than 20° to ensure sufficient illumination and to minimize the effect of shadows

The off-nadir viewing angle is less than 25°.

Pixel alignment: The values of the coordinates for the upper-left corner (x and y) of the upper-left pixel of an image dataset shall be an integer multiple of the pixel size (resolution) in the corresponding direction (x and y)

Time window:

A narrow time window for the 2018 growing season was respected where possible. If too many clouds, gaps, or cloud shadow artefacts were observed in the tile, the time window was extended to utilize a slightly wider time window. This was fully utilized in Iceland and the UK and Ireland. Various other tiles within the dataset were also processed using the wide time window. Iceland was an extreme case, and around Vatnajökull National Park data from 2017 was used to gapfill. In this area the 2018 composite was overlayed on top of a clearest image from 2017 to avoid no-data gaps. The 2017 and 2019 data usage is minimal throughout the coverage.