As the European Union advances the mid-term evaluation of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2023–2027, the BEATLES project has provided detailed feedback to the European Commission’s consultation, bringing forward evidence from across European farming systems and value chains.
Building on its work on behavioural change and CSA, the project aims to ensure that EU agricultural policies translate into real, practical change on the ground.
A timely contribution to CAP reflection
The consultation represents a key moment not only to assess how the CAP is being implemented, but also to reflect on whether it is delivering on its core objectives: fair farm incomes, resilient food systems, environmental sustainability and vibrant rural areas.
In its contribution, BEATLES welcomes this opportunity while underlining a persistent challenge: the gap between policy ambition and farmers’ lived experience. While CAP support remains essential for maintaining agricultural activity, the project’s evidence shows that its impact is still uneven when it comes to fairness, inclusion and long-term resilience.
Beyond funding: understanding what drives uptake
Drawing on insights from its five EU-wide Use Cases, BEATLES highlights that financial support alone does not guarantee the adoption of sustainable practices. Farmers’ decisions are shaped by a broader set of conditions, including administrative complexity, trust in institutions, access to advisory services, labour availability and the organisation of value chains.
This behavioural perspective is central to the project’s approach: policies are effective only when they are accessible, predictable and aligned with farmers’ realities. As previous BEATLES work has shown, perceptions of fairness across the food system are a key trigger for long-term engagement and change.
Administrative burden and accessibility remain critical
A recurring message in the feedback is the need to look beyond formal simplification efforts. While recent CAP adjustments aim to reduce administrative burden, BEATLES stresses that the real question is whether farmers actually experience these improvements in practice—whether in terms of time, clarity, digital usability or payment predictability.
Particular attention is needed for small and medium-sized farms, young farmers, women farmers and those operating in remote or disadvantaged areas, who often face disproportionate barriers in accessing support.
Fairness and structural challenges at the core
The contribution also points to structural challenges that continue to limit the effectiveness of CAP measures. These include persistent income disparities, weak bargaining power in food supply chains, barriers to generational renewal and the under-recognised role of women in agriculture.
In this context, BEATLES emphasises that the CAP’s success depends not only on its own instruments but also on how it interacts with wider policy frameworks, including market regulation, innovation systems and rural development measures.
Towards a more outcome-oriented evaluation
A key recommendation is to strengthen the evaluation framework itself. Rather than focusing primarily on expenditure and compliance, BEATLES proposes a more practical, step-by-step approach that links policy design, accessibility, uptake and real outcomes.
This includes assessing whether:
- the right beneficiaries can access support,
- commitments are maintained over time,
- behavioural change is taking place, and
- interventions deliver tangible economic, environmental and social results.
Such an approach would help distinguish between measures that are formally implemented and those that are genuinely effective in practice.
Strengthening inclusion, skills and governance
The feedback also highlights areas where further progress is needed, including support for generational renewal, gender equality, access to training and advisory services, and the enforcement of social conditionality.
In addition, BEATLES calls for stronger and more meaningful participation of civil society and rural stakeholders in the design and implementation of CAP measures, recognising their role in improving policy relevance and accountability.
Looking ahead: lessons for the future CAP
Beyond the current programming period, the BEATLES contribution offers important insights for the design of the post-2027 CAP. It suggests that a truly performance-based policy must go beyond indicators and reporting, placing greater emphasis on socio-economic outcomes, territorial differences, governance quality and real behavioural uptake.
The transition towards fairer, more climate-smart and socially sustainable food systems requires not only funding, but also trust, coherence, simplification, fairness, advisory support, and stronger attention to how policy works in practice for different categories of farmers and rural actors. For this reason, the interim evaluation should be used not only as a reporting exercise, but as an opportunity to improve the effectiveness, coherence and legitimacy of the CAP in the remainder of the current programming period and in the design of the future CAP framework.
Priority interventions could include targeted income support for small and medium-sized farms, start-up and succession packages for young farmers and new entrants, dedicated support for women-led farms and rural enterprises, strengthened advisory services and on-farm training, support for producer organisations, cooperatives, short supply chains and local processing, as well as measures linked to social conditionality, decent working conditions and participatory rural governance.
Eligibility criteria could be designed to prioritise active farmers facing structural or territorial disadvantages, such as small and medium-sized holdings, farms in remote, mountain or depopulating areas, young farmers, new entrants, women-led or co-led holdings, labour-intensive farms, and beneficiaries participating in collective schemes, recognised sustainability initiatives, training or advisory programmes, or fairer value-chain arrangements.
Earmarking should be used more strategically to reserve minimum shares of CAP funding for these groups and purposes, including dedicated allocations for generational renewal, women’s inclusion, advisory and training services, value-chain cooperation, social conditionality support, and civil society participation, in order to ensure that resources reach those actors, territories and transitions with the greatest need and the highest public value.
Looking ahead, this also has clear implications for the future evaluation of the CAP (2028-2034).
- At EU level, the European Commission should strengthen the evaluation framework so that it assesses not only absorption of funds, outputs and formal compliance, but also real socio-economic outcomes, distributional effects, behavioural uptake, governance quality and territorial fairness, supported by more disaggregated and comparable data across Member States.
- At national level, Member States should commit to improving monitoring systems, involving stakeholders more meaningfully, reporting more transparently on who benefits from support, and using evaluation findings to adjust implementation in a timely manner.
Future CAP evaluation should therefore become a more continuous learning and accountability tool, linking European objectives with national delivery responsibilities and ensuring that policy commitments made at both levels are translated into credible, measurable and socially relevant results on the ground.
Author: Blanca Casares-Guillén (AEIDL)
