Introduced under the Common Agricultural Policy 2023-2027, eco-schemes aim to promote biodiversity, climate resilience and environmental sustainability in EU farming. Yet, a report by NABU and Birdlife finds their potential remains largely untapped due to persistent challenges in design, funding and implementation. Oliver Moore breaks down key insights of the report.
Central to the green architecture of the Common Agricultural Policy, eco-schemes are having limited environmental impact. Instead, they largely function to pay for practices that are already happening. That’s according to a recent report by Birdlife Europe and NABU (Birdlife Germany).
The report draws on data from 12 EU countries – Belgium (Wallonia), Bulgaria, Czechia, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Spain. – which introduced eco-schemes in 2023.
These voluntary schemes were designed to “promote biodiversity, climate resilience, and environmental sustainability” the report states.
They are, however, delivering little of substance due to “persistent challenges in design, funding and implementation” it continues.
The Untapped Potential of Eco-schemes also assesses farmer enrolment levels and barriers to participation, while spotlighting best practice and offering recommendations for better uptake and impact.
For problems and barriers to adopting and improving eco-schemes, the analysis draws data from the entire EU. The impact on eco-schemes of the 2024 CAP ‘simplification’ package, is also assessed, as are monitoring and evaluation tools. A package of recommendations based on best practice makes up the final part of the report.
What are the key findings and recommendations?
- The overall target area for eco-schemes is largely achieved (70% of the farmed area) but these tend to be low environmental impact schemes such as nutrient management schemes, over and above biodiversity specific ones.
- Admin and bureaucracy remain a challenge, especially for small farms, which reduces uptake and participation.
- Some innovative and attractive schemes and methodologies have been found, with the Solvenian example of buffer strips benefiting lapwings taking up a significant portion of the report. However even successful methodologies – such as tiered eco-schemes incentivising participation in the Netherlands – carry the risk of “promoting practices with limited environmental benefits” the report finds.
Overall the authors recommend that: Member states and the European Commission must increase ambition; improve payment structures and tailoring; encourage longer term commitments; provide targeted support for small and disadvantaged farms; make interconnected climate and biodiversity measures available; use technology to better improve monitoring, implementation and streamlining; ensure improved stakeholder engagement.
Year 1 – preference for cropping and input focused schemes
In broad terms, the land area aimed for (70% of all utilisable land area) was achieved. Of the 12 member states assessed, Poland and Spain saw an especially high update of schemes.
However there was a general preference everywhere for cropping or input-focused measures over and above biodiversity-focused ones.
Standout examples from Poland include an eco-scheme to choose liquid fertilizer application (oversubscribed by 1862%) and microbial alternatives to chemical pesticides (oversubscribed by 688.3%) .
The next most popular were integrated crop production (Romania 677.8%), reduced pesticide use Belgium (460%) and a range of carbon farming measures related to cropping in Poland at 300%+ oversubscribed.
Whereas “some of the biodiversity-focused schemes, such as those supporting non-productive areas, creation of landscape features or reduction of plant protection products, achieved only about 15% of their planned area in countries like Belgium (Wallonia), Germany, and Bulgaria.”
What has shaped enrollment? Lessons from Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechia and Germany
In Belgium, low payment rates and the unintended consequences of moving money from scheme to scheme reduced uptake, clarity and goodwill in pesticide-related eco-schemes in Belgium. For the latter, “originally, the pesticide reduction scheme was not planned in Wallonia, which is why the budget was taken from the ecological connectivity scheme, thereby reducing its impact. Nature conservationists have called for the removal of the pesticide reduction scheme, advocating for the funds to be transferred back to the ecological connectivity scheme.”
However, a tiered scheme with graded payments for achieved soil cover levels saw very good uptake. Moreover it was “straightforward and results-based” with the potential to be further improved, including via better payments for more diversified cropping.
An interesting conundrum is the balance between ambition and oversubscription. In the case of Bulgaria, if there is a 460% oversubscription on the eco-scheme to reduce a small number of pesticides, perhaps the scheme could be a little more ambitious? It could in 2026 have an appropriate (i.e affordable) number of participants and a larger number of pesticides in the list of ineligible products.
In Czechia, a comprehensive whole-of-farm eco-scheme with tiered payments was introduced. However following the CAP simplification package, ambition was reduced.
“Initially, one of the main conditions in 2023 required farms to establish or designate at least 3% or 5% of their area (depending on the GAEC 8 option selected) as non-productive features. These could include fallow land, landscape elements, or buffer strips, with additional options for bio belts, agroforestry, or other Pillar II measures. But following the EU Commission’s Simplification Package, the scheme’s ambition was reduced, requiring only 5% of any non-productive features, including nitrogen-fixing and intercrops. Most farmers are expected to choose the least demanding options.”
These options – nitrogen-fixing crops and intercrops – are the most productive and least nature-based of the options.
In Germany a massive biodiversity-focused eco-scheme with €1.6 billion to spend to promote unproductive areas, was designed to complement GAEC 8 (space for nature). In 2023, it was administratively cumbersome, inadequately promoted, and also impacted by legislative rollback on environmental matters: “The main reasons for this low participation were the derogation of GAEC 8 and insufficient promotion and communication to farmers.”
Improvements were made in 2024, because of low uptake. Both participation and ambition increased: “One of the most notable changes is the increase in eligible non-productive land from 6% to 8% of the farm’s arable land. This expansion allows farmers to allocate larger portions of their land for non-productive purposes, which directly contributes to fostering biodiversity across a wider area. Over time, this could enhance the diversity of plant and animal species in these regions.”
Another positive now is: “the clear definition of timeframes for sowing and maintenance. The new rules outline precisely when activities like sowing or maintenance should occur, ensuring that the designated areas serve as habitats for insects, birds, and other wildlife for an extended period.”.
Uptake improved markedly in 2024, while new related eco-schemes are to be made available in 2026.
Conclusions
A section in the report laments a focus on ‘compensation for loss’, and emphasises the benefits of eco-schemes as “an additional incentive payment”.
However there is a core issue underpinning eco-schemes. Eco-scheme money is drawn from Pillar I, which has always been seen de facto as farmer’s money. This means it was, for many, considered to be part of the core money available, and should not require ‘doing more with less’.
This wider context in part explains how there is much land area covered by eco-schemes, but often it’s either for existing practices or for slightly adjusted practices.
And The Untapped Potential of Eco-schemes does not see much of this potential being fulfilled anytime soon. Its conclusion cites the change from mandatory to voluntary in GAEC 8 as an example of the general trend: “early indications suggest that overall, the amended and newly introduced eco-schemes are unlikely to compensate for the loss of GAEC 8, due to delays in introducing new eco-schemes, problematic design, inadequate budgets, and/or non-competitive premiums, which makes the schemes unattractive to farmers.”
In other words, when the environmental rollback came, ambition skedaddled.
On the whole, The Untapped Potential of Eco-schemes laments little ecological progress in a farming landscape that so badly needs it.
For the most part, it’s business-as-usual, or business-as mildly adjusted – policymaking that results in little more than running to stand still.
Nevertheless, the report spotlights how with careful, regionally specific, tailored approaches – some countries have come up with ways and means to improve ambition.
In rare cases, environmental ambition and participation both increase. What lessons will be learned from these and other successes for the eco-schemes on offer for 2026 and 2027?
More
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