National strategic plans for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are not aligned with the EU’s environmental objectives, and the next CAP recommends more robust monitoring and evaluation systems for member states, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors. are.
The CAP implementation plan for 2023-27 is “greener than the previous CAP period, but is not aligned with the EU’s climate and environment goals” and “key elements for assessing green performance are “is lacking,” the report says. European Court of Auditors on Monday (September 30).
Increasing room for maneuver in implementing the CAP through national strategic plans was one of the key changes in the 2021 CAP reform. However, the auditors noted that the plan fell short of the targets set by the European Green Deal, particularly the Farm to Fork Strategy.
The strategy, published in 2020, called for a 50% reduction in pesticide use by 2030, a 20% reduction in chemical fertilizer use and a 25% increase in organic farmland by the same year.
The current CAP puts environmental and climate goals at the “center of policy,” the European Commission noted in its response.
It added that member states had provided “partial information” on the CAP’s contribution to Green Deal goals. This is because CAP is also related to policies outside of CAP.
“In its report to the European Parliament and the Council of Europe, the European Commission quantifies the contribution of national strategic plans on greenhouse gas emissions to the EU Green Deal targets and The plan is to evaluate changes in By the end of 2025, the bloc’s executive branch concluded.
green requirements
CAP 2023-27 strengthens green conditionality, or environmental farming requirements that farmers must comply with in order to access subsidies.
But auditors said the enhancements were “underutilized” to meet green targets.
Member States instead decided to use the flexibility granted by the Strategic Plan to “reduce the applicability of some requirements or delay their application.”
The audit shows that before the EU eased green requirements in response to farmers’ protests in early 2024, many member states had already exempted certain beneficiaries from some of their obligations or postponed green measures. I was doing things like that.
Eco-schemes that encourage farmers to take environmental measures on the ground were “mostly a continuation of existing green farming practices”, an audit carried out in Ireland and France showed. For other countries, such as Spain and Poland, no data were available to assess overall changes.
Member States are seeking greater flexibility to reduce the administrative burden of CAP implementation in general. At the Agri-Fish Council meeting on 23 September, EU ministers asked the European Commission to change the rules for 2023 and 2024 to avoid penalizing member states that make errors in their mandatory annual performance reports. They requested that it be considered as a “learning period” for some performance indicators. February 15, 2025.
Strengthening the monitoring system
The auditors recommended that the European Commission strengthen the future CAP monitoring framework on climate and environmental performance. But for the European Commission, this concerns the legal provisions to be negotiated in future CAPs after 2027.
The executive said it was nonetheless committed to facilitating the exchange of “green” good practices in planning between member states from a climate and environmental perspective.
“A new study, funded by the Commission, will assess best practice green strategies in national planning,” the commission said in its response to the audit report.
(Editing by Angelo Di Mambro and Owen Morgan)
