The European Commission has launched an online dashboard to allow citizens of EU member states to track their country’s progress in meeting targets under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
The move is in line with the commission’s requirements for transparency and monitoring.
The dashboard presents the targets set out at national level by each member state in its approved CAP Strategic Plan, as well as targets at wider EU level.
EU countries began implementing their CAP plans as of January 1, this year. Each plan combines a range of targeted interventions to address the specific needs of the EU country concerned.
These interventions aim to deliver results in relation to EU-level objectives, while also contributing to the ambitions of the European Green Deal.
CAP legislation at EU level outlines 44 individual ‘result indicators’ linked to specific objectives.
Not all 44 of these result indicators were included in every country’s CAP Strategic Plan. Countries outlined which result indicators they aimed to achieve in their plans based on their own national requirements.
The purpose of the new dashboard is to ensure that a member state’s progress in meeting their result indicators is transparent and available to the public.
The coverage or uptake of CAP-funded or co-funded actions is typically expressed in terms of areas (share of agricultural land) or beneficiaries (i.e. share of farms).
Given each country’s specific needs, they may choose different approaches to measuring progress for certain result indicators, such as wider coverage of practices, or targeting hotspots where enhanced actions are needed.
According to the commission, each member state’s choices in relation to how they proceed on their respective CAP targets should be seen in the context of different starting points, specific issues to address in each country, their farming structure, environmental challenges, and regulatory requirements.
Countries can update their CAP Strategic Plans as time goes on if needs be, in which case the online dashboard will be amended accordingly.