Category: Blog posts

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Strategic planning in the new CAP

The CAP Strategic Plans Regulation (EU) 2021/2115 established the governance and strategic planning framework for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2023–2027 period. It operationalised the “new delivery model”, granting Member States significant autonomy in designing and implementing CAP Strategic Plans, with the European Commission exercising oversight primarily through ex post performance clearance and conformity checks.

The Commission’s proposal COM(2025) 545 for a Budget Performance and Tracking Regulation (Performance Regulation) would replace 2021/2115 and embed the CAP within a horizontal EU-wide budgetary governance framework. This framework extends beyond agriculture, applying uniform rules for performance tracking, indicator use, data reporting, and transparency across all EU budget expenditure. This shift implies a rebalancing of competences: more standardisation at EU level, earlier and more structured Commission involvement, and integration of CAP governance into a broader performance cycle.

The proposed Performance Regulation has three main objectives set out in the Explanatory Memorandum:

– Making consistent the provisions for supporting horizontal principles across the EU budget (e.g.… Read the rest

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How big will the CAP budget be in the next MFF?

The answer to this question is of course that we cannot know for certain at this stage. Under the Commission proposal the CAP will be merged into the proposed National and Regional Partnership Fund (NRPF) along with all other shared management funds where currently Member States receive pre-allocated amounts. Under the new arrangement, there would be only one pre-allocated envelope for Member States. There is a minimum ring-fenced amount for what is now referred to as CAP income support interventions (plus some fisheries support) of €295.7 billion. But the final amount allocated to CAP interventions will depend on how Member States allocate their NRPF resources in their NRP Plans.  

It is no surprise that the initial response from farm organisations and stakeholder groups to the Commission’s CAP proposal focused on the budget allocation, although how the money is spent is at least equally important. I also did this in my first post following publication of the Commission’s MFF and CAP proposals (see “The Commission’s CAP budget proposal in the next CAP”).… Read the rest

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Climate and environment in the Commission’s CAP proposal

There has been considerable speculation since publication of the Commission’s proposals for the MFF and for the CAP 2028-2034 in July for what they might mean for climate and environmental ambition in the next programming cycle. The Commission’s Vision for Agriculture and Food Communication had underlined that the call in von der Leyen’s Political Guidelines for “a better balance between incentives, investments and regulation” should be interpreted as giving greater flexibility to farmers and shifting from conditions to incentives. To achieve the same level of climate and environmental ambition through a voluntary approach only using incentives implies the need for significant additional resources. But the Commission’s MFF proposal implies a probable cut in CAP resources, leaving open the question whether the existing level of ambition for these objectives can even be maintained.

In this post, I examine the Commission proposals under three headings:  where climate and environmental action fit within the hierarchy of CAP objectives, innovations in the design of relevant interventions that can impact on the ability to achieve ambitious targets; and the likely level of resources to be available to support such action.… Read the rest

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Horizontal Principles in the Next MFF and Implications for the CAP

Merging the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) into the single National and Regional Partnership (NRP) Fund raises more than just the fungibility of resources between the different priorities in that Fund (though this is largely neutralised for the CAP by ring-fencing a minimum amount for CAP income support and fisheries interventions, for further details see my post on this topic). The CAP is also subject to a new set of management regulations that will have important implications for the governance of the policy.

Elements of governance that are affected include the division of competences between the Commission and Member States under shared management, the preparation, approval and monitoring of the CAP chapter in the NRP Plans, performance monitoring, and the role of partnerships. One important change is that the design of CAP interventions will now be even more clearly subject to several horizontal principles such as the rule of law and compliance with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the ‘do no significant harm’ (DNSH) principle, climate and environmental mainstreaming, and gender equality.… Read the rest

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Negotiating the Member State allocations in the next MFF

Negotiations on the EU’s Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) take place within the General Affairs Council of the European Union. Ultimately, the final decisions are taken by the European Council of Heads of State and Government and must also receive the consent of the European Parliament. There are many points of friction, including the overall size of the MFF, its allocation across headings, and the question of own resources and how to finance the budget. Traditionally, there is a specific focus on the pre-allocated amounts as these are a significant determinant of the net balance between receipts and contributions for individual Member States – often referred to as the focus on juste retour in the MFF negotiations.

In the Commission’s proposal for the next MFF, the pre-allocated funds have all been merged into a single European Fund for economic, social and territorial cohesion, agriculture and rural, fisheries and maritime, prosperity and security.… Read the rest

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Changes proposed to the management of agricultural crises

The term of office of the previous Commissioner for Agriculture Janusz Wojciechowski 2019-2024 was dominated by crises, including the COVID pandemic, the impacts of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on energy and fertiliser prices, and the impacts of Ukrainian exports of grains and oilseeds on the markets of neighbouring countries. Following the announcement to launch a Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture in December 2023, it was thus not surprising that Wojciechowski speculated on the need for a common crisis intervention instrument in the future CAP with a reinforced budget, proposing that this should form a “third pillar” of the CAP.

Since then, the Commission has proposed a new architecture for crisis management in the CAP, first in its legislative proposal on CAP simplification in May 2025 and, more recently, in its legislative proposal for the European Fund accompanying its MFF proposal published in July 2025. This post reviews the Commission proposals highlighting the main innovations and assesses the likely performance of the proposed new architecture.… Read the rest

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What impact will degressivity and capping have?

In my previous post, I calculated the size of the amounts that could be allocated to the degressive area-based income support payment using the minimum and maximum amounts of aid per hectare proposed in the NRPF Regulation of 130 EUR and 240 EUR, respectively. This payment is intended to provide area-based income support for eligible hectares to farmers to address income needs. The purpose of the exercise was to examine the potential allocations to other CAP instruments, for example, agri-environment-climate actions, depending on how much Member States allocated to the degressive area-based payment.

The limitation of that calculation is that it assumed that all hectares would receive these amounts, and thus it took no account of the potential impact of degressivity and capping. In this post, I try to provide a crude estimate of the likely impact of degressivity and capping for several Member States. It turns out that the degressivity and capping rules, though they seem sharp, will have a limited impact in practice in many countries.… Read the rest

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Commission proposal could allow significant increase in CAP basic payments in many countries

Initial reactions to the publication of the Commission’s proposals for the next CAP and their budgetary implications focused on the overall reduction in the CAP budget for income support (the minimum €296 billion ring-fenced within the National and Regional Partnership Fund). In a previous post, I calculated this reduction to be 15% on a like-for-like basis compared to the current income support under the CAP in current prices. Making a comparison with the current total CAP budget will depend, in addition, on how much Member States will allocate to the non-income support elements of the CAP (including, for example, Co-operation projects (LEADER, EIPs) as well as Knowledge Exchange (AKIS)), which cannot be known at this stage.

However, a deeper dive into the provisions of the relevant Regulations suggests that things are not so simple. Commissioners Serafin and Hansen have promised that farmers can continue to receive the same money under the proposed CAP as they do at present.… Read the rest

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The distribution of direct payments in calendar year 2022

One of the striking proposals in the Commission’s CAP Regulation is the introduction of a much sharper degressivity in area-based income support payments starting with payments above €20,000 and with a ceiling of €100,000. It is thus appropriate that DG AGRI released its annual report on the distribution of CAP direct payments for the financial year 2023 just two days before the CAP proposal was announced as part of the 2028-2034 MFF package (in addition, the detailed figures are found in the Annex available here). It appears that the report was completed by October 2024. It is striking that the date of publication of these annual reports has been gradually slipping over time (the full set of reports with date of publication is available on the Commission web page on income support) which obviously limits their usefulness.

Although the report relates to the financial year 2023, I have deliberately titled this post as referring to the calendar year 2022 to emphasise that the figures refer to payments made to farmers in claim year (or calendar year) 2022.… Read the rest

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Which countries gain or lose from the National and Regional Partnership Fund?

This is a revised version of the original post, to take account of the very helpful comment below which pointed out an error in my original Table 1. This is the strength of blog posting and I am very happy to make the correction.

One of the ideas stressed in the Commission’s presentation of the CAP budget proposal in the next MFF is that the €296 billion ring-fenced for CAP income support and some fisheries expenditure is a minimum amount. Member States will be able to add to that from their overall ceilings in the National and Regional Partnership Fund (NRPF) when they design their National and Regional Partnership Plans. While correct in theory, there will also be huge demands for these resources from other priorities. In this post, I assess the likelihood that Member States might be willing to top up the minimum amounts for CAP income support from their overall NRPF allocation.… Read the rest