The CAP after 2027 – Preserving and Supporting Biodiversity

The project aims to analyse the legislative proposals and the negotiation process for the EU’s
Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2027 with regard to their implications for biodiversity protection and
agri-environmental policy in Germany. It focuses on the question of how the future CAP
can contribute to achieving national and European biodiversity objectives while remaining feasible within Germany’s multi-level governance system.

The project has both an analytical-conceptual and a political-strategic objective. The former involves developing an analytical framework to assess the CAP proposals within the context of relevant sets of policy objectives and to derive assessment criteria. On this basis, scenarios for possible CAP policy designs after 2027 will be developed and assessed in terms of their environmental, economic, social and administrative consequences. From a political-strategic perspective, the project aims to derive realistic and feasible policy options for German agri-environmental policy. These design options are expected to inform both the ongoing European negotiation process and national policy implementation. The focus is on concrete design options for strengthening biodiversity measures, improving the interplay within the policy mix, and making use of existing flexibility in the policy design of the CAP at federal and national level.

Expert discussions and a final workshop serve to validate assumptions, scenarios and policy options, and to develop them further with a view to implementation. In addition, ongoing monitoring of the policy process enables to capture relevant developments during the project period and integrate them in the scenarios and recommendations. This allows the project to evaluate the CAP post-2027 from a biodiversity perspective and supports the development of policy options for achieving national targets for agri-environmental policy in Germany after 2027.