Limited environmental impact and high costs

The paper summarizes the most important results of the scientific project "Evaluation of the Common Agricultural Policy II". Land use data sets were used to in order to analyse how the 2013 reform of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has affected the environment. The results show that none of the greening measures included in the CAP (maintenance of permanent grassland, ecological priority areas, crop diversity) managed to contribute significantly to an improvement of the environment. However, the paper shows also how future measures integrated in the Common Agricultural Policy can be constructed in order to be more effective. Funding for green measures that is not generally based on area size, but is based on the foregone profits of the farmers, can lead to more positive environmental effects in general and especially in highly productive arable farming locations.