The European Commission “does not have enough evidence to comprehensively assess the CAP’s needs and impact”, according to a report by the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

Speaking from Brussels, ECA lead Joëlle Elvinger said: “If I can boil it down to one key message, it’s [that the] current data and tools in the Commission do not deliver certain essential information needed for well-informed policymaking and this is a problem.”

On CAP, she said it is “crucial” that the Commission “relies on robust data to identify where the money is going and whether it is making the intended impact” and that “without data, there can be no knowledge”.

Environmental measures

The ECA found that the Commission’s Directorate-General for Agriculture (DG Agri) lacks data on the impact of environmental measures, farm inputs and off-farm incomes.

The auditors found that DG Agri “still uses conventional tools such as spreadsheets to manually analyse the data it collects from EU countries” and does not use currently available “data techniques” for more efficient data management.

Furthermore, the ECA highlighted that, in 2018, it recommended “before making any proposal for the future design of the CAP, the Commission should assess the income position for all groups of farmers and analyse their income support need”, taking into account on-farm and off-farm income.

It said the Commission then partially accepted this recommendation but as of February 2022, it has “not made any progress” on it.

However, the ECA said that to tackle its data gaps, the Commission has taken “several legislative and other initiatives that could contribute to better policy”.

Responding to the audit, the Commission claimed that “despite the few data gaps” the ECA found, it has “sufficient knowledge to carry out impact assessment and propose fit-for-purpose [CAP] policies”.

It says it has “been constantly trying to address the few areas where data is more difficult to obtain” by encouraging and co-financing EU member states to collect this data.

The Commission also highlighted the “strong resistance of member states” to collect data on off-farm incomes.