National CAP strategic Plan

19 August 2021

After the common agricultural policy (CAP) reform in 2018, the European Commission adopted a more flexible, performance and results-based approach. The aim was to combine the increasing the European Union’s ambitions in terms of sustainability with local needs.

The new EU CAP focuses on 9 social, environmental and economic objectives, which will be the basis upon which EU countries implement their CAP strategic plans.

Designing their national CAP strategic plan, Member States will program targeted interventions to face local specific challenges and to contribute to the European Green Deal. The designing process is carried out thorough a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis of their territory and agri-food sector to assess the national needs.

During the preparation of the national CAP strategic, the Commission will support Member States in order to:

• Facilitate Member States in taking full advantage of the future CAP and its instruments;
• Ensure that each CAP strategic plan includes an intervention strategy explaining how the CAP instruments will be functional to the achievement of the CAP goals, in keeping with the Green Deal ambition.

Indeed, the Commission provided each State with tailor-made recommendations, to assist in the drafting of the national CAP strategic plans by identifying the key areas to focus on.

Even though, the formal submission of CAP strategic plan by Member States and the Commission’s approval, will depend on the outcome of the negotiations with the co-legislators, the deadline for the submission of national plans is the 1^st of January 2022.