The EU’s farming subsidy programme has shapeshifted significantly from its original form, thanks to a series of exemptions and, crucially, a fundamental change in its regulation in 2024. But how have these changes impacted the green architecture of the policy? Here we present a collaborative article on changes to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), in particular for two of the ‘good agricultural and environmental conditionalities’ (GAECs) – one on peatland and wetlands (GAEC 2) and on space for nature (GAEC 8). National environmental and agricultural coalitions in the Good Food Good Farming network from around Europe – from Poland, Ireland, Czechia, France, Italy, Spain and Bulgaria – have all fed their insights into this article.
Quick re-CAP
This latest round of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was promised to be the greenest yet, with a number of core economic, social and environmental objectives, including a focus on climate change, environmental care and landscapes. This meant the introduction of a number of basic green rules, so-called ‘Good Agricultural and Environmental Conditions’ (GAECs), which have been compulsory for a number of years.
But much has changed since the original shape of the CAP was agreed upon. Following the widespread farmers protests across the EU, back in March 2024, the European Commission put forward a regulation to amend the CAP. While there were many motivations for the protests, CAP’s administrative burden and CAP’s environmental requirements were the two areas the new regulation focused on.
A change in GAECs from mandatory to largely voluntary was one of the main changes made to CAP with this new regulation. As we reported at the time, the proposal shifted the EU’s farming subsidy programme from mandatory requirements towards a mix of mandatory and voluntary, slashed or weakened a range of environmental measures, shifted more power into the hands of member states and scrapped checks and controls for all farms under 10 hectares (all details here). For now, these changes apply for one year but could be extended.
The most noteworthy of these included dropping the requirement to devote at least 4 % of arable land, at farm level, to non-productive areas or features, including land lying fallow.
This was done rapidly, despite legally dubious elements and a lack of evidence in some cases. No formal public consultation or anything approaching an impact assessment was conducted. The Ombudsman – the EU’s watchdog – has since formally opened an inquiry into the Commission’s conduct in these fast-tracked changes.
And while Member States were invited to offer a top-up, as voluntary eco-schemes, to farmers setting aside land for non-productive features, it is becoming increasingly clear that eco-schemes have not been used to their full potential (or even half potential).
With simplification being the name of the game for this new Commission and more CAP simplification measures on the table in the coming months, we can expect more changes in the pipeline.
There are some hints about what this might look like. For example, a recent Council note on “further simplification needs”, circulated in advance of a meeting of EU agriculture ministers at the end of January 2025, questions the necessity of implementing the GAEC 2 (protection of wetlands and peatlands), given that a “similar obligation has been introduced under the Nature Restoration Law.”
In short – all this means that we have not yet seen the end of changes to CAP, which is why it’s worth taking stock of where we’re currently at, and the impact of changes we’ve seen already.
What has happened since?
Green organisations and networks have reported worrying signs from the ground since the March changes. This includes Birdlife Europe and Central Asia, who highlight concerns over engagement and transparency, but also changes to the GAECs and the eco-scheme offerings, which overall amount to a weakening of environmental standards and of future farm sustainability and resilience.
A letter from Birdlife, dated October 2024, referring to activities in Italy, Czechia, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia, Belgium (Wallonia and Flanders) and Spain, outlines a number of these concerns.
For example, it highlights that new eco-schemes in Czechia, Italy and Poland appear to be underfunded and poorly designed, acting more as box ticking exercises than genuine tools for biodiversity.
Additionally “proposed amendments to existing eco-schemes supporting maintenance of nonproductive areas and landscape features in countries such as Czechia, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Belgium (Wallonia), and Spain are “likely to weaken the original environmental ambitions of the scheme, either by lowering the required share of non-productive areas and landscape features or other changes to the eligibility rules.”
Birdlife also expressed concern at the lack of inclusive stakeholder engagement in CAP amendment processes in countries like Italy, Spain, Belgium (Wallonia) and Poland, where consultations have been inadequate or superficial, undermining transparency and collaboration:
In these countries monitoring committees were either “not consulted on the proposed changes to the CAP Strategic Plans, or the consultation was merely a formality, with no real opportunity to influence the outcome,” they conclude.
In February a new report by BirdLife Europe and NABU (BirdLife Germany) finds that eco-schemes “are falling far short of their potential”.
Drawing on an analysis of 12 member states, the report finds many member states offer easy-to-deliver rather than environmentally impactful eco-schemes. Administrative challenges, design flaws, poor monitoring and a wider drive towards simplification over environmental ambition were also cited as concerns.
GAEC changes
Before we dig into the specifics of the changes we’ve seen with GAECs 2 and 8, below we list an overview of the most relevant GAECs, and their status before and after the 2024 changes, if relevant.
| GAEC | Before | After |
| GAEC 1 Permanent Grassland | Maintenance of the ratio of permanent grassland to arable on a national basis and the preservation of carbon stocks. | Member States are allowed to grant specific exemptions where there is a risk that requirements would run counter to their objectives |
| GAEC 2: Protection of wetland and peatland. | This is a new requirement that most Member States decided to implement from 2024 or 2025. | Delays in introduction |
| GAEC 3: Ban on burning arable stubble, except for plant health reasons. | ||
| GAEC 4: Establishment of buffer strips. | Farmers are required to use no fertilisers or pesticides on at least three metres of land adjoining the length of water courses, to prevent water pollution. This is an enhanced requirement compared to the previous CAP. Nine Member States require wider buffer strips. | |
| GAEC 5 Soil erosion | Provisions on tillage management reducing the risk of soil degradation and erosion. Grassland ploughed between 1 July – 15 Oct, green cover must be established within 14 days. Ploughing of all grassland is prohibited between 16 Oct – 30 Nov. | Also weakened through a general exemption mentioned above (also GAEC 6 and 7) |
| GAEC 6 Minimum Soil Cover | Minimum soil cover to avoid bare soil in sensitive periods. Controls on removing green cover during certain times of the year and a ban on severe poaching and sacrificial paddocks. | This shall be determined by Member States, offering more flexibility |
| GAEC 7 Crop rotation | Crop rotation and diversification requirements. | Member States may allow farmers and other beneficiaries to fulfill this standard with crop diversification (Rollback to 2013 levels) |
| GAEC 8 Non-productive areas and landscape features | Minimum share (4%) of agricultural area devoted to non-productive areas or features – Retention of landscape features – Ban on cutting hedges and trees during the bird breeding and rearing season and measures for avoiding invasive plant species. Eco-scheme Space for Nature 7% and 10% top ups. | All aspects of the former Ecological Focus Areas apart from maintaining landscape features are deleted. This means pesticides can be used on them. The obligation to protect landscape features as well as the ban on cutting hedges and trees during the bird breeding and rearing season remain. |
| GAEC 9 Protection of environmentally sensitive permanent grasslands in Natura 2000 sites | GAEC standard 9 sets a ban on converting or ploughing permanent grasslands designated as environmentally sensitive in Natura 2000 sites. | Allows MSs to allow ploughing of permanent grasslands in exceptional situations where such environmentally sensitive permanent grassland is damaged, for instance by predators or invasive species, and appropriate measures to address such situations, including exceptions to the ban on ploughing of the areas concerned, to restore such permanent grassland, may be necessary to ensure that the GAEC standard 9 requirements contribute to protection of habitats and species. |
| Exemption for small farms | The administrative burden of smaller farmers (up to 10 hectares of agricultural areas, (i.e. 65% of farmers) will be eased by exempting them from control visits to check adherence to conditionality requirements. At the same time, the fact that smaller farmers will be exempted from penalties will also simplify Member States’ administrative work, as national authorities will not have to calculate penalties which may fall under the applicable de minimis threshold. |
So what has been the impact of these changes so far?
To assess what the impact has been, National Coalitions from a number of member states gave their assessment of the changes in the GAECs. Below are some of the more significant developments for some two of the most important and impactful of the GAECs, numbers 2 and 8.
GAEC 2: Protection of wetland and peatland
GAEC 2 aims to protect carbon-rich (sometimes called organic) soils This is because large quantities of carbon are stored in peatlands and wetlands, while certain agricultural practices such as ploughing can have a negative impact on such soils regarding their carbon storage.
The aim here is minimising carbon loss from such soils. This is important because, as the European Court of Auditors report on CAP and climate (2021) states, 20% of EU-27 agriculture emissions come from the 2% of the drained organic soils.
This new GAEC has in many cases been deferred into the future. While initially understandable, as it is a new GAEC, it is also the case that there may be a lack of political will to grapple with thorny issues.
Poland and Ireland are two member states with a significant amount of peaty soil, and both are showing real reticence to progress this GAEC.
Wiktor Kotowski, Wetland Ecologist at the University of Warsaw’s Faculty of Biology, and co-founder of the Wetland Conservation Centre pointed to some specifics on the Polish situation.
“In general, the main trick that our ministry of agriculture used to actually avoid GAEC 2 on the vast majority of agricultural peatlands is to put a very high content of organic matter in soil as the minimum criterion for GAEC 2. They recently changed it from the original 30 to now 60 percent, the latter characterising relatively undisturbed peats. Our Ministry of Environment did not back up this proposal. We have sent an information letter to DG Agri on the matter” .
This means that most farmed organic soils are largely exempt for eligibility considerations under GAEC 2.
Meanwhile, Ireland is still not implementing this GAEC, and is playing for more time. Peat soil mapping initially caused delays, which critics understood. Getting this right is an important and complex issue, with implications going forward for many water, biodiversity and climate targets. So initially there was support from agri-environmental stakeholders to get this right, rather than to implement it fast.
According to Fintan Kelly of the Irish Environmental Network, the Environmental Pillar was “supportive in principle” of the Irish government’s request to delay implementation of GAEC 2, explaining that “additional time would be used to address concerns relating to definitions, mapping, thresholds and effective safeguards.”
Initial concerns pointed to outdated (i.e. overly shallow) definitions of the depth of peaty soils, outdated maps (when more recent ones were available) and thresholds which would exclude large areas – over 200,00 hectares – of peaty soil.
Kelly also adds that the delay in the publication of the Derived Irish Peat Map also meant that there was a good argument to delay implementation until the most up to date map was available. “Following the publication of the updated map last summer we would have expected the department to proactively engage with all stakeholders with a view to implementing GAEC 2 on January 1st 2025,” he said.
However, he notes that Ireland again finds itself in the position where an extension is being sought out of the blue. “According to the department the Minister has asked for more time to address the concerns of the farmers that will be affected,” He said, adding that in particular they cite difficulties with the “accurate identification of the areas and the interplay with the Department and EU mapping and control systems for the CAP.”
A minimum three year delay in implementation may better reflect the mood in Departmental circles to keep avoiding the issue of better environmental management of peaty soils. After the Nature Restoration Law debacle, and in the run up to the recent elections in Ireland, late 2024 was an unlikely time to see progress on this matter.
The Irish Environmental Network has produced in September 2023 a position paper on GAEC 2, and is developing and updating its arguments. This includes details on the way that organic soils should be redefined and mapped, as well as specific recommendations for managing peatland restoration and restoration and ways to better align policy. You can find the paper here.
| The Irish Environmental Network has produced in September 2023 a position paper on GAEC 2, and is developing and updating its arguments.
Briefly, these are summarised in the table below: Redefinition and Mapping of Organic Soils
Protection and Management Regulations for Organic Soils
Sustainable Land Use and Community Involvement
Peatland Conservation and Restoration Strategies
Policy Alignment and Implementation Measures
|
There are also problems elsewhere. For France GAEC 2 has also not been implemented, but it supposedly will be. According to French Collective Nourrir’s Goulven Le Bahers there was the establishment of new monitoring committee from October specifically for this GAEC.The government however is attempting to find a new way to map the wetlands, but French platform Collectif Nourrir is not happy with this approach given that it uses the RAMSAR network which was “not supposed to be tied specifically to policy and conditionality.”
Czechia and Bulgaria claim it will be applied from 2025. There is no information to hand yet on whether there will be more delays in these member states.
GAEC 8 Non-productive areas and landscape features
GAEC 8 was one of the most significant and impactful of GAECs to be turned exclusively voluntary.
The 2024 Simplification Regulation removed the GAEC 8 obligation to dedicate a share of arable land to non-productive areas and features, although the requirement to maintain landscape features during bird breeding and rearing season remained. Already, member states could avail of a number of temporary derogations from GAEC 8 stretching back to 2022.
According to Justyna Zwolińska of the Living Earth Coalition, in Poland the obligation to allocate 4% of arable land to non-productive areas was abolished from 2024. Instead, an eco-scheme has been introduced, encouraging the exclusion of arable land from production provided that no pesticides are used.
Similarly, in Italy, the 4% non-productive area requirement has been removed, and the eco-scheme that has been created to compensate for this is very weak and unattractive.
France’s GAEC 8 sees the removal of all the non-productive areas. This has an impact on the eco-scheme where the mention of landscape features and non-productive areas on arable lands has been removed.
Bulgaria, Spain, and Czechia all removed the % for non-productive elements for GAEC 8. “Czechia also sees attempts to weaken conditions in the whole-farm eco-scheme too – it is not clear yet if it will succeed” says Martin Rexa. He adds that in the whole-farm eco-scheme the overall percentage of non-productive features was weakened from 8 to 5% and the whole percentage can be fulfilled by nitrogen or catch-crops too – before at least 3% had to be fulfilled by landscape features, fallow land or protective strips.”
Ireland has already chosen a more ambitious GAEC 8 standard than other Member States and has committed to the 4% target within the National Biodiversity Action Plan. However now there is no legal basis to require a minimum of 4% space for nature from farmers. Almost all farmers have the 4% minimum target and the vast majority of farmers engaging with the eco-schemes have higher space for nature. Ireland’s existing 7 and 10% space for nature eco-scheme thresholds remain in place.
Impact of other changes – small farm exemptions and weak eco-schemes
Polish NGOs are also worried about the exemption from inspections for small farms. Justyna Zwolińska of the Living Earth Coalition says that “they have the intervention to support small farms, but it seems that money may be spent in the wrong way, and future consequences of small farms having to return money.” She adds: “this can heavily impact the future survival of small farms, which means the land may be lost to industrial farms”.
The Czech coalition’s (Hnutí DUHA) Martin Rexa points out that “eco-schemes are our biggest issue”. Around 95% of the budget goes to the whole-farm eco-scheme and the Ministry of Agriculture wants to remove the condition of “truly non-productive features” and weaken it significantly. This means that potentially tens of thousands hectares of fallow-land would disappear.” The “already agreed and improved” GAEC 5 (soil erosion) “should start to apply in July 2025 – after a one and a half year delay. It is not yet clear what will be the result – if at all and how the new rules will be implemented and if it will make anti erosion protection stronger or weaker.”
For Ireland the poor implementation of agri-environmental scheme acres cooperation has had negative impacts. Computer systems were not up to the task, which led to delayed payments for what is an ambitious way of managing land in areas.
While there are fewer small farms in Ireland than in some other Member States the level of farm inspections was already inadequate. The move to a total exemption for all small farms worries some. “We also need to consider the Small Farm Exemption within the context of changes to the CAP budget,” Fintan Kelly of the Environmental Pillar said, adding that giving more money to small farmers who are poorly regulated runs the risk that we will be “funding environmental damage”.
In France, the biggest remaining issue is that changes in GAECS have not seen improvement in other areas. Collective Nourrir’s Goulven Le Bahers explained that the changes on GAEC have “not led to improvements of incentive measures as the European Commission was suggesting.” Because of this, Collectif Nourrir will focus “on improving those incentive measures for the future of the French current PSN rather than trying to save GAECs.”
Another concern is that the ministry of agriculture also made changes on the definition of farmer, extending definition to new types of farmer society and corporations. This could mean that farmers members of several types of corporations could benefit several times from the PAC subsidies, the association warned.
Conclusion
The news that some Ministers are pushing to drop GAEC 2 altogether because the Nature Restoration Law (NRL) will come into force soon is yet another indicator of the direction of travel for agri-environmental action.
While GAEC 2 and the rewetting obligations within Art 11 of the Nature Restoration Law are complementary they are very different in scope and ambition. The NRL requires that Member States carry out a limited amount of water table management on farmed peatlands. GAEC 2 provides for baseline conditionality which provides protection for all organic soils at a national level. Indeed Member States such as Ireland have stressed the differences between the two obligations when designing the national approach to GAEC 2, highlighting that any new measures must not be as ambitious as NRL’s rewetting obligations.
The move to make the GAECs largely voluntary has been accompanied by weak eco-schemes. GAECs 2 (peaty soils) and 8 (space for nature) are two of the more important of the GAECs from an environmental perspective. However feedback from a number of national coalitions suggests little motivation to even implement GAEC 2. It has been delayed year after year. Efforts to implement it have tended towards the least ambitious of options, as regards environmental impact.
GAEC 8 has seen years of derogations and now eco-scheme replacements in some member states. Where this has happened, there are no indications from the national coalitions that this is being done with ambition.
By definition, voluntary measures will never have the same level of impact as mandatory, as the maximum number of participants will either be the same (unlikely) or fewer (far more likely). For most member states, as far as we currently have available information, the main change is to introduce weak eco-schemes as alternatives.
Outside of these two GAECs, national coalitions have also expressed concerns as to the exemptions of small farmer inspections, and have seen little tangible improvements on the ground.
While there are 27 member states, and our sample is too small to be fully representative, it is nonetheless concerning that there is little to suggest any progress towards CAP’s environmental objectives in these changes.
Responses from national authorities and DG AGRI offer little assurance of meaningful improvement. Improvements could be made regarding participation, transparency and environmental outcomes if the following happens:
- Ensure inclusive stakeholder consultation and reporting at the national level.
- Publish observations on CAP amendments for transparency.
- No backsliding – prevent amendments that weaken environmental goals, especially on GAEC 8.
- Provide robust targeted advisory support for farmers.
- Publicly disclose data on non-productive area support.
Without urgent action, the CAP risks further undermining its legitimacy and failing to address biodiversity and climate crises, leaving EU objectives unmet.
Thanks to the national coalitions for their contributions to this article. These are: Living Earth Coalition (Poland), Irish Environmental Network (Ireland), Collectif Nourrir (France), Hnutí DUHA (Czechia), Cambiamo Agricoltura (Italy), Society for Territorial and Environmental Prosperity (STEP – Bulgaria) and Por Otra Pac (Spain).
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