Evaluation plans as foundations for better CAP assessments

An evaluation plan clarifies the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why it matters’ while charting the direction that evaluations must take to ensure that they take into account everything from policy priorities to budget constraints.

For the new CAP, the evaluation plan is the instrument for EU Member States to structure, manage and steer assessments of their CAP Strategic Plans. It also helps achieve a common understanding on evaluation needs, objectives, responsibilities and tasks while contributing to the identification of appropriate data and resources, as well as establishing greater transparency and ability to steer future policy design.

For the 2023-2027 period, EU Member States are required to develop an evaluation plan that contains information on the intended activities, which must be structured around a minimum of seven interlinked sections, specified in Annex II of Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/1475.

This intertwined approach is essential. For instance, needs and objectives determine the choice of evaluation activities, which, in turn, must be reflected in the timeline and determine the data and information required to meet them. Having this clear and well-structured timeline is also critical to ensure effective communication of evaluation results, follow-up activities and capacity building – critical steps to support the development of the next CAP.

Stakeholder mapping will also have an integrated role throughout the plan as it will capture the new responsibilities and evaluation needs required by the 2023-27 CAP. For example, some stakeholders may be part of the governance and coordination structure, while others may be data providers or play a role in the communication of results.

Governance and coordination is another cross-cutting element of the plans as those involved with CAP evaluations will provide input to the needs and objectives, timeline, provision of data and information, and the organisation of technical support and capacity building.

The overarching goal is that these interlinked sections work together so that evaluation plans can improve the CAP’s overall evaluation framework and help EU Member States carry out more effective assessments.

Novelties and challenges

EU Member States already have a vast amount of experience with evaluation planning from their Rural Development Programme in the 2014-20 period but they may need to consider some new and challenging aspects in the future. For example, each country must conduct direct payments evaluations, which were typically done at the EU level previously, but now form part of the CAP Strategic Plan intervention logic. This means that national evaluations may examine measures with significantly bigger impacts than the last programming period.

The stakeholder mapping is another new element of evaluation plans, which is relevant for data provision, communication activities and supporting policy design. It will help decide on the most relevant groups and/or evaluation governance structures in relation to planning, tendering, implementing, quality control, dissemination and follow-up of evaluation findings. For example, National CAP Networks are now expected to have a bigger role in national monitoring and evaluation activities.

An additional novelty are the key evaluation elements used when assessing the effectiveness of CAP Strategic Plans, such as 'viable farm income' or 'resilience’ (listed in Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2022/1475). Unlike the last programming period, there are no common evaluation questions in the current Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Framework, which means that the evaluation elements may guide EU Member States towards what is important to assess, given the intervention logic of their CAP Strategic Plans. These evaluation elements are further supported by factors of success, also understood as ‘judgment criteria’ or ‘points of comparison’, which can be understood as a means to measure the achievement of the key evaluation element (Annex I of Regulation (EU) 2022/1475 recommends several factors of success for all evaluation elements).

One of the most important purposes of the evaluation plan is to ensure that the data needed is available on time, in the appropriate format and of a high quality required to identify data needs and sources, which can help overcome data gaps. This can be challenging as some EU Member States may need new data sources to assess measures like direct payments, but the evaluation plan guidelines, developed by the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP, can support them in identifying data needs and gaps that can also capture all the required and potential indicators.

All the above gives EU Member States more flexibility in planning their evaluations according to the intervention logic of their CAP Strategic Plan while aligning it to the needs of different stakeholders. This means that the importance of the evaluation plan as an information and planning tool has grown, which requires extra attention to make it relevant for an EU Member State and their CAP Strategic Plan. To help guarantee success, the process of developing the evaluation plan must therefore be seen as being as important as the final outcome – after all, if the right plan is in place, good results follow.

Read more about evaluation plans in the latest issue of CAP Evaluation News.