The EU CAP Network, supported by the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP, is organising its eleventh Good Practice Workshop. This edition focuses on “Measuring what matters – Approaches to netting out CAP impacts” and will bring together experts and stakeholders to discuss innovative methods, key challenges, and practical solutions for assessing the true impacts of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
Understanding the real impacts of the CAP is crucial to ensure that the policy delivers on its objectives and provides tangible benefits for farmers, rural communities, the environment, and society at large.
Under the 2023–2027 CAP programming period, the Performance Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (PMEF) places strong emphasis on evaluating outcomes and impacts. This means distinguishing the changes directly attributable to the CAP from those influenced by other external factors — a process known as “netting out” impacts.
For Member States, this is a key requirement under Implementing Regulation (EU) 1475/2022. They must measure the contribution of their CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs) to the nine specific objectives and quantify their contributions to at least nine common impact indicators. Moreover, cost-effectiveness assessments at EU level must rely on net impacts, ensuring that evaluations reflect only the improvements directly linked to CAP interventions.
The overall objective of the eleventh Good Practice Workshop is to demonstrate and analyse approaches for netting out the impacts of the CAP. The Workshops’ specific objectives are to:
- Build capacity of CAP evaluation stakeholders about the rationale for netting out CAP impacts and ways to carry out the netting out exercise;
- Share knowledge through the exchange of practical experiences from evaluations of net impacts of the CAP under different CAP objectives;
- Provide an opportunity for networking and identification of needs for further support for Managing Authorities, Paying Agencies, CAP networks and evaluators in relation to the limitations and opportunities for netting out CAP impacts.