At the Good Practice Workshop on the assessment of the Green Architecture (GA) of CAP Strategic Plans, held in March 2026 in Larnaca (Cyprus) Dr. Josselin Rouillard presented key considerations for evaluating the coherence of CAP instruments. The workshop, organised under the EU CAP Network with support from the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the CAP, brought together evaluators, policymakers and experts to exchange approaches and practical experiences on assessing the GA.

The CAP Strategic Plans (CSPs) bring together a wide range of instruments designed to address environmental and climate objectives. This combination of instruments is referred to as 'green architecture' (GA). These guidelines support managing authorities and evaluators in assessing how these instruments function collectively. The focus is not on individual measures in isolation but on analysing the GA as an integrated system.

In this study published by the European Commission, a first assessment is made of the strategic decisions made by Member States for the use of EUR 307 billion in support of agriculture and rural areas between 2023 and 2027. It maps the choices made in the CAP Strategic Plans (CSP) approved in December 2022 and analyses the joint efforts and potential impacts of Member States’ choices in relation to the nine specific objectives and the cross-cutting objective, with a focus on selected Green Deal targets.

For the period 2023-2029, Ecologic Institute joined the Core Team of 20 senior experts supporting the European Evaluation Helpdesk for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). As part of the EU CAP Network, the Evaluation Helpdesk's mission is to ensure the effectiveness of CAP evaluations by specifically assisting managing authorities, national CAP networks, paying agencies, evaluators and the European Commission.