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What is TOOLS4CAP?

What is
TOOLS4CAP?

Tools4CAP, which stands for Innovative Toolbox empowering effective CAP governance towards EU ambitions, is a Coordination and Support Action in Horizon Europe (2023-2026) coordinated by Ecorys, gathering 20 partner organisations.

The project aims to support the design and monitoring of the national Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plans (SPs) 2023-2027 and lay the foundations for sound preparation of Post-2027 Strategic Plans through a bottom-up adaptation of innovative methods and tools.

Following extensive negotiations between the European Parliament, the Council of the EU and the European Commission, an agreement was reached, and a new way of working to modernise and simplify the EU’s policy on agriculture was introduced.

The 2023-27 CAP is based on a ‘New Delivery Model (NDM)’ where Member States must submit a national Strategic Plan presenting the country’s needs for each specific objective as well as the interventions they plan to implement to address these needs. It entails significant changes to the CAP’s governance with the introduction of SPs and new monitoring, review and evaluation requirements.

The CAP’s new performance and results-based approach provides more flexibility and more subsidiarity to the Member States to design and monitor the national CAP SPs. The new policy is a critical tool in reaching the ambitions of the European Green Deal, securing the achievement of sustainability and resilience goals for the EU’s Agri-food systems. To this end, innovative governance models are essential to enable result-based policymaking to deliver the best policy pathways to facilitate the green transition.

Tools4CAP ambition is to provide end users with suitable tools for a more evidence-based policy design, ultimately improving capabilities to design next-generation Strategic Plans and to perform monitoring tasks.

For policy-makers (EU, national and regional) and governance bodies

For universities, researchers and young scientists

For innovators and developers

For farmers, producers and producers’s associations

For other stakeholders relevant to agricultural and rural development

The overall ambition of Tools4CAP is to support the design, implementation and monitoring of the CAP by stimulating Member States to adopt methods and tools adapted to their needs. It will provide tailor-made solutions, including modelling tools, participatory decision-making and multi-governance tools, as well as new data and monitoring solutions.

The project will realise its ambition by:

  • Delivering a comprehensive inventory of methods and tools used in the 27 Member States, methodological guidelines on innovative solutions and a Handbook of good practices.
  • Establishing a Replication Lab to demonstrate the use of innovative methods and tools in 10 Member States and to promote their uptake across the EU-27.
  • Setting up a Capacity Building Hub to help end users (which include policy-makers at all levels and governance bodies, but also researchers, cooperatives of farmers, food producers, NGOs, innovators and developers, and relevant actors) to reinforce their capacity to use innovative tools, including models used by the European Commission. This Hub is made up of a Stakeholder Engagement Platform and the Toos4CAP Academy.
  • Integrating the results in a Capacity Building Toolkit, that will be translated into 16 languages.

Tools4CAP’s methods and tools will cover three key areas:

  • Quantitative modelling tools for ex-ante and ex-post evaluations
  • Participatory and multi-governance decision tools
  • Novel data and monitoring solutions