Preparing a new CAP based on evidence: lessons learned from the Good Practice Workshop in Helsinki
- Evaluation
- Evaluation Findings
- Ex Ante Evaluation
- Evaluation Processes
- Evaluation
- CAP Strategic Plans
- Agricultural Production
About 80 participants from 26 Member States gathered in Finland to share their experiences using evaluations to improve the implementation of the CAP Strategic Plans and to prepare the future CAP.
How can evaluations make a real impact on the current and future CAP cycles, and how can their findings translate into better-designed and implemented interventions for the next period? These questions were at the heart of discussions among participants at the Good Practice Workshop on the 'Use of evaluations for improving policy and for ex ante assessments to prepare the next CAP' held in Helsinki, Finland, on 2-3 June.
The event was hosted by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland and the Finnish Rural Network and organised with the support of the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP. Eduardo Serrano-Padial, from Unit A3 'Policy performance' of DG AGRI, opened the debate with a presentation highlighting the role of impact assessments and how evidence from evaluations feeds into better policy-making at both the EU and Member State levels.
This workshop enabled Member States to learn from each other’s experiences.
Preparation for the next CAP must be built not on assumptions, but on the results of completed evaluations, their integration into strategic documents and continuous learning.
She illustrated Lithuania’s approach to using evaluation findings during the transition from the Rural Development Programme to the CAP Strategic Plan.
Katarina Carthew, an analyst at the Swedish Board of Agriculture, presented on how Sweden has established a follow-up system to track and report on evaluation findings and recommendations. This enables the Managing Authority to monitor how evaluation results inform CAP implementation and shape future interventions. She also stressed the evaluator’s responsibility to provide relevant recommendations and the need to prepare Managing Authorities to use evaluation findings effectively.
Attending a Good Practice Workshop for the first time, Valentina Costarrosa, an evaluator from Germany, appreciated the interactive format of the event.
My main lesson learned is to pay more attention to how to formulate a recommendation to reach the target audience, so that they can implement the result of our evaluation in an efficient manner in policy development, reducing bureaucratic processes.
On the second day, Eero Pehkonen from the Finnish Managing Authority and Tapio Salo from the Natural Resources Institute Finland showed how rough estimates based on national coefficients can quantify CAP effects ex ante cost-effectively.
They explained that, to assess the effectiveness of the green architecture measures included in their CAP Strategic Plan, Finland combined planned outputs with country-specific coefficients informed by scientific expertise and national datasets. The approach is broadly comparable to the Evaluation Helpdesk/JRC methodology, while providing more nationally adapted estimates. Finland plans to further develop and apply this methodology in the next programming period, supporting a shift towards more impact-driven planning and more evidence-based policy design and evaluation.
From Finland to Hungary, Attila Nagy from the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture explained how evaluations in Hungary are integrated across the full CAP policy cycle, supporting both current CAP implementation and post‑2027 CAP planning.
Evaluation is not the end of the policy cycle — it is a continuous feedback mechanism where continuous engagement, structured feedback loops and well-timed recommendations turn evidence into better implementation and future CAP design.
He added that involving evaluators early, when designing measures and calls, ensures recommendations reach decision-makers in time to allow for meaningful adjustments. Antoinette Conroy, from the Irish Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, welcomed the Hungarian approach and its commitment to an ex ante assessment to prepare the next programming period.
During group work, participants discussed best practices and constraints in establishing follow-up mechanisms and in using qualitative or quantitative approaches to analyse and use evaluation findings when designing interventions for the CAP post 2027, i.e. using findings to feed into needs assessments or shaping intervention logics and also further processing findings to inform scenario building, modelling or other impact assessment options.
This event was extremely useful and relevant for the moment we are in now because we were able to share our experiences on how other Member States use CAP evaluation findings, either in a qualitative or in a quantitative way to prepare the next CAP.
Malatesta added that it was interesting to find out that many Member States situate themselves at the interface of these two approaches and how a combination of the two approaches is needed, depending on the topic and on the intervention.
Discover the photos and the presentations on the event page.
