Evaluation of the CAP from an environmental perspective : low impact, high costs

• The GAP reform of 2013 has led to an increase in fallow land and permanent grassland through "Greening". However, this growth is not sufficient to achieve significant improvements in environmental protection and nature conservation.
• To mitigate the environmental risk from plant protection products, there would need to be a change in land use toward low-risk production practices in significantly higher proportions.
• For the most part, farms had to make only a few adjustments to receive the full greening subsidy. Yet, the targets were not ambitious enough to achieve significant improvements for the protection of biotic and abiotic resources.
• The subsidies for greening amounted to roughly eight times the additional operating costs.