The role of evaluation in the new Common Agricultural Policy
Highlights from the online debate "Learning from the Past: lessons for the new Common Agricultural Policy"
The webinar “Learning from the Past: Lessons for the New Common Agricultural Policy” examined how the CAP’s governance, performance, and accountability framework is evolving, and what lessons from past programming periods could inform the post-2027 CAP. The discussion took place against the backdrop of the proposed Regulation on National and Regional Partnership Plans, which would integrate the CAP into a broader, cross-sectoral programming architecture alongside cohesion policy, climate action, and other EU priorities.
A central point was the shift away from CAP Strategic Plans as stand-alone instruments, governed by procedures specific to agricultural policy. The proposed approach would position the CAP as a dedicated chapter within an integrated Partnership Plan. Participants linked this shift to wider debates on strategic coherence, alignment of objectives, and horizontal accountability across policy areas. While integration may improve consistency and coordination across funds, speakers also raised concerns about preserving the specificity of agricultural policy and ensuring that sectoral objectives are not diluted within a more complex governance framework.
Rethinking performance, accountability, and evidence
The webinar pointed to the evolution of the CAP’s performance framework. Under the current period, the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (PMEF) relied on a structured hierarchy of output, result, impact, and context indicators, combined with annual performance reporting. The proposed Performance Regulation moves towards common intervention fields and harmonised indicators, inspired by cohesion policy practices. While this facilitates comparability and expenditure tracking across the EU budget, participants noted a potential rebalancing towards outputs, with results and impacts playing a less binding role.
Speakers from DG AGRI emphasised that this evolution should be read in the context of the Commission’s Better Regulation agenda. This agenda seeks to ensure that EU legislation is evidence-informed, proportionate, transparent, and delivers results with minimal administrative burden. In this context, the increased role of result indicators linked to the Annual Performance Review, and the stronger focus on quantitative methods under Regulation (EU) 2022/1475, were highlighted as key levers to reinforce accountability.
A recurring message was that stronger performance frameworks depend on data availability and analytical capacity.
DG AGRI highlighted ongoing efforts to strengthen the evidence base. These include the transition from the Farm Accountancy Data Network (FADN) to the Farm Sustainability Data Network (FSDN), the development of disaggregated data on interventions and beneficiaries (DIB), the catalogue and labelling of CAP interventions, and improved information on farming practices supported. These developments are essential to move beyond procedural reporting towards meaningful policy learning.
From the JRC perspective, participants stressed the need to enhance and integrate modelling capacities to support forward-looking policy analysis. This includes expanding individual models, improving integration across socio-economic, biophysical, and environmental data and models, and developing integrated analytical frameworks capable of assessing policy coherence across objectives. Anticipation, rather than ex-post assessment alone, was identified as a key requirement for a future-proof CAP.
Evaluators perspectives
Building on the institutional and analytical perspectives discussed during the webinar, two additional interventions highlighted structural weaknesses in the current CAP framework and pointed to priority areas for future reform. Based on existing projects, it was noted that a key concern is the fragmented support for Climate-Smart Agriculture (CSA). This fragmentation is compounded by weak coordination with non-CAP instruments, where support often relies on national subsidies or tax schemes, particularly for energy and protein crops.
Speakers pointed to the need to strengthen stakeholder engagement and participatory, evidence-based evaluation, grounded in scientific methods and effective communication. Insights from the evaluation community echoed these concerns, pointing to persistent weaknesses in CAP Strategic Plan implementation. Evaluators observed attempts to address too many complex objectives through weak intervention logics, limited quality control in strategic planning, and insufficient use of experience and impact evidence. Policy uncertainty, driven by climate events, legal changes, and shifting priorities, combined with limited administrative and analytical capacity at national and regional levels, has further constrained effective implementation. Participants highlighted growing challenges related to budgetary uncertainty, complex co-financing arrangements, and the need to better balance economic, societal, and environmental objectives.
The webinar concluded that learning from past CAP implementation requires not only institutional reform, but also sustained investment in data, methods, and analytical tools. Greater harmonisation and integration can enhance coherence and accountability, but only if performance monitoring is designed to generate insight rather than compliance.
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