Assessment of generational renewal strategies covering elements beyond the CAP
This Thematic Working Group aims to develop a toolbox of methods and datasets to help Member States with the assessment of generational renewal strategies.
Generational renewal represents one of the most pressing structural challenges facing European agriculture, with only 12% of farm managers under 40 years old and half of the nine million European farmers expected to retire within the next decade. Young or new farmers face several entry barriers: difficulties in accessing land and credit, limited rural services, and succession and retirement systems that can delay farm transfer.
In October 2025, the EU Strategy for Generational Renewal in Agriculture set clear targets to address these challenges: by 2040, Europe aims to double the share of young and new farmers, ensuring that agriculture remains innovative, competitive and resilient.
Valuable methodological work exists across multiple publications in the EU CAP Network, at the EU and Member State level, to assess generational renewal strategies, but current evaluation approaches are fragmented. Managing Authorities face challenges in designing evaluation frameworks that address all dimensions of generational renewal. Evaluators lack integrated guidance on demographic trends, entry barriers, farm succession dynamics and the impacts on rural vitality.
Objectives
The main objective of this Thematic Working Group is to develop a toolbox of methods and datasets that integrates and complements the existing methods for assessing generational renewal in all different dimensions. This tool will support Managing Authorities and evaluators in assessing generational renewal strategies. The following specific objectives will be pursued:
- To establish a generic intervention strategy and an evaluation framework for assessing generational renewal strategies, including an analysis of the role played by the CAP and other relevant policies or reforms in promoting generational renewal.
- To prepare tools for assessing generation renewal strategies, with links to evaluation criteria (effectiveness, efficiency, relevance, coherence, sustainability), evaluation timing (ex ante or during implementation and ex post) and how the different dimensions of generational renewal can be used as lenses to ensure a comprehensive assessment, bringing together existing methodological approaches and expanding where necessary.
The outcome of this Thematic Working Group will take the form of an online toolbox, published on the EU CAP Network website as a topic-specific learning portal, allowing users to navigate easily among the different tools.
Working process
This Thematic Working Group runs from March to July 2026 and will be structured as follows:
- Working Package 1: Launching of Thematic Working Group
- Working Package 2: Coordination and content development
- Working Package 3: Quality control and finalisation
- Working Package 4: Knowledge transfer and dissemination
Organisation
The Thematic Working Group is set up by the EU CAP Network, supported by the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP. Participation in this Thematic Working Group is by invitation only and includes evaluation experts, Commission staff and, potentially, representatives of Member States.
For any questions, please contact the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP at evaluation@eucapnetwork.eu.
