The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the EU’s primary framework for translating agricultural objectives into farm-level action. With a substantial budget and flexible implementation through national CAP Strategic Plans under a common EU framework, it holds significant leverage in shaping farming practices across Europe – including the capacity to influence farmers’ reliance on pesticides and promote the uptake of sustainable pest management practices.  

The CAP’s “Green Architecture” – including conditionality and voluntary instruments such as eco-schemes, and agri-environment-climate (ENVCLIM) interventions – defines the environmental conditions and ambitions guiding European agriculture. The way these instruments are calibrated determines whether current pesticide dependencies persist or whether they can drive a broader transformation of the agricultural system.

This policy brief assesses how relevant CAP instruments currently address pesticide use and identifies adjustments to better support and accelerate the transition toward more sustainable farming practices. 

Read the full policy brief to explore how the CAP can enable structural change in pesticide use.

Key recommendations:

• Reinforce baseline environmental standards as a meaningful driver of change: Conditionality standards (SMRs and GAECs) currently function mainly as minimum safeguards, with limited ambition, weak enforceability, and frequent exemptions. Strengthening these by introducing more ambitious and rigorously enforced requirements would establish a more robust foundation for sustainable pest management.
• Increase ambition and effectiveness of voluntary measures: Eco-schemes and ENVCLIM interventions tend to focus on low-ambition or incremental improvements, while more transformative practices remain underfunded, administratively complex, or risky for farmers. Shifting the focus of these instruments toward preventive, system-level approaches, supported by stronger incentives and a shift toward result-based payments, would significantly enhance their impact.
• Integrate sustainable pest management into knowledge, advisory, and sectoral support instruments: Advisory services, innovation systems, and sectoral supports remain inconsistently implemented, weakly integrated, and insufficiently monitored. Aligning them more closely with other instruments, coupled with clear targets and stronger evaluation mechanisms, would allow these instruments to more effectively support farmers in adopting reduced-pesticide practices.
• Align CAP instruments to accelerate systemic change: The different instruments are largely implemented in parallel rather than as elements of a coordinated strategy, resulting in fragmented support and limited effects. Designing CAP Strategic Plans as integrated intervention pathways – with stronger coordination, continuity, and complementarity – would create a more consistent and sustained policy environment for transition. 

Overall, the CAP holds immense potential to drive a structural transition toward low-pesticide farming systems, yet this leverage remains underutilized. Unlocking transformative impact requires stronger enforcement, improved coordination, and a more coherent use of the policy architecture, ensuring it operates as a unified strategy to reduce pesticide dependence and enable systemic change.