Eco-schemes: a tool for long-term sustainable transition?

This blog post was written by Paula Marlene Nipper as an assignment for the master Law and Sustainability in Europe (2025-2026).

Introduction

Since their implementation within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in 2023, the Commission has claimed that eco-schemes are intended to encourage farms “evolving towards more sustainable farming models” and support a “shift towards more environmentally friendly and resilient production systems”  by financially incentivising sustainable activities of Europe’s farmers. However, eco-schemes have attracted criticisms and confusion alike, as they contribute to the overly complex web of requirements and criteria for CAP funding intended to provide vital financial support for farmers. Partially in response to these criticisms, the CAP 2028-2035 proposal suggests that eco-schemes along with similar mechanisms shall be retired and replaced with a single, slightly modified scheme. In this blog post, it will be explored how eco-schemes do not achieve their stated aim of encouraging long-term transitions towards sustainable farming models, and how the CAP 2028-2035 cycle begins to remedy this issue. Lastly, a suggestion will be made for how these ideas could be developed into a revised eco-scheme strategy which truly supports transitions to sustainable farming models. 

Eco-Schemes in the Current CAP Framework

Eco-schemes trace their lineage back to the Agri-Environmental Climate Mechanisms (AECM) which were intended to compensate farmers for losses incurred when implementing sustainable farming practices. Eco-schemes were introduced in the current CAP cycle under Article 31 of Regulation 2021/2115 and added to the AECM by providing the Member States with an opportunity to put together a list of voluntary activities, the implementation of which could provide an additional top-up on CAP payouts for participating farmers. This, in principle, meant a shift from compensation to incentivisation. In contrast to the 5-year AECM, eco-schemes incentivise one-year arrangements and are financed under the first CAP pillar. Under Article 31 of Regulation 2021/2115, Member States are empowered to compile a kind of ‘menu’ of voluntary measures that may address a wide variety of sustainability concerns that are not incentivised elsewhere within the CAP, go beyond existing requirements, and contribute to the overall environmental objectives of the EU Green Deal. Compensation, which is additional to the basic income support, is paid out once a year per hectare covered by the scheme and can, at the discretion of the Member State, be either based on carrying out the measure, or a particular sustainable result which the measure is intended to achieve.

As an example, the Irish National Strategic Plan currently offers eight voluntary measures out of which farmers are given the opportunity to choose at least two once a year to be eligible for the top up. The schemes include:

• Space for Nature practices (allocating at least 7% of their land to natural habitats/ecosystems),
• Extensive Livestock Production (allocating a maximum of 1.4 livestock units per hectare per annum),
• Limiting Chemical Nitrogen Usage,
• Planting of Native Trees/Hedgerows,
• Use of GPS Controlled Fertilisers,
• Soil Sampling and Appropriate Liming (adding lime to the soil to maintain a higher pH of the soil),
• Planting a break crop,
• Planting of multi-species sward (planting mixtures of smaller plants that improve soil health, biodiversity and cattle nutrition).

These measures cover a wide range of sustainable actions that would otherwise go unsupported within the CAP. In this sense, the eco-scheme mechanism has been effective in recognising the heterogeneity of sustainable actions that require support to effectively incentivise a transition to sustainable farming, and farmers receiving the eco-scheme grants do score higher on some sustainability indicators.

However, when taking a closer look at the incentivised measures, it becomes clear that they have little to do with long-term transition to sustainable farming models. Indeed, as will be argued in the following, the very format of the eco-schemes doesn’t show much potential to support long-term transition as a matter of policy design, encouraging instead short-term measures that can be checked off a list and then forgotten about until the next financial year. 

Eco-Schemes Do Not Support Long-Term Sustainable Transitions

A transition requires long-term, systematic and goal-oriented changes in behaviour. While the eco-schemes could theoretically incentivise a farmer to adopt individual sustainable measures in the long term, eco-schemes do not introduce a coherent system farmers could transition into and provide no incentive to even consider more holistic, interlinked and long-term behavioural changes.

There is little central guidance about what exactly eco-scheme measures are meant to incentivise in the long term. Every Member State creates a different amalgamation of sustainable measures that weren’t already included under other schemes such as the agri-environmental climate commitments, making eco-schemes seem like an afterthought or catch-all of sustainable practices.  This decentralisation of the eco-schemes causes goal-dilution, and fails to support the kind of coherent sustainable vision that might encourage an uncertain farmer to take the leap into not just using less fertiliser one year but transitioning into a holistically sustainable farming model.

Furthermore, the eco-schemes run on a one-year timeline, failing to encourage multi-year, long-term changes that require continuous, systemic action. The one-year model that rewards farmers as they check off measures from the ‘menu’ also introduces sustainable practices as economic add-ons or transactional considerations rather than farming models, which require a fundamental shift towards sustainability. That eco-schemes are currently an economic consideration can also be seen in the skewed participation data that threatens the scheme’s impact potential on smaller farms.

Eco-Schemes in the new CAP 2028-2035

In the upcoming CAP cycle proposal, the eco-schemes (Article 10) are merged with AECM and climate commitments forming Agri-Environmental Climate Actions (AECA) to “bring higher coherence”. This new hybrid will not specifically be tied to loss of income or additional costs incurred, as was the case for AECM. Instead, the new AECA are applicable to both single and multi-year activities, and they allow for organic farms to automatically be eligible for the financial top-up. 

These proposed CAP changes address the current eco-schemes’ lack of support for long-term actions, as well as giving the schemes a clearer goal. Accordingly, these approaches show potential to be harnessed to truly turn the new Argi-Environmental Climate Actions into a pathway to a sustainable transition.

Harnessing the CAP 2028-2035 Approaches for Long-Term Transition

By automatically making organic farms eligible for the top-up under the AECA schemes in the next policy cycle, the CAP would actively provide farmers with a coherent alternative farming model, and the AECA with a clearer mission statement. Indeed, linking the ‘actions’ under the AECA with clear, desirable farming models could provide the AECA with the direction, clarity and long-term holistic approach that the eco-schemes currently lack. The automatic compliance mechanism for organic farms could be extended to include other sustainable farming models such as agroforestry, no-till farming, permaculture, regenerative or circular models. Instead of being styled as a menu of incoherent actions, the AECA could then act as a ‘pathway’ or guide with actions that facilitate phasing in sustainable transitions to these farming models. The clearer set up of the scheme towards transition would also give the AECA a more targeted, clear impact in relation to EU sustainability goals. 

The shift in the CAP proposal to explicitly including the possibility of actions that extend beyond the one-year cycle of the current eco-schemes in the proposed AECA could further encourage actions on a more fundamental, long-term level. It is an opportunity for Member States to specifically introduce actions that are geared towards holistically transitioning into one of the automatically compliant, sustainable farming models instead of one-off actions. Examples of more fundamental, long-term actions could be: modernisation of equipment, finding circular material pathways, educational measures (a measure explicitly invited into the AECA by the Commission) or even moves from livestock to arable farming. Notably, France, Germany and Greece have already introduced actions under the eco-schemes that incentivise agroforestry, an example of how actions can support more holistic approaches.

Achieving the automatically eligible faming model would also present an opportunity for simplification which, addresses criticisms of the CAP and EU’s current better regulation ambitions. By relieving farmers of a portion of the administrative burden of organising individual one-off actions and compliance procedures, farmers may be enabled to simply maintain a more coherent, predictable farming model. A farming model that, notably, may produce additional, competitive advantages on the market through, for instance, access to certain popular organic labels.

Conclusion 

Despite the Commission’s tall ambitions for the eco-schemes, they currently present a complicated and disjointed mechanism, that supports one-off interventions as opposed to long-term sustainable transition; something that is necessary if the EU’s climate ambitions are to be achieved. The overhaul of the eco-schemes in the new CAP 2028-2035 proposal provide starting points that indicate the potential of the AECA to overcome these limitations by, instead of remaining a ‘menu’ of short-term actions, focusing on ‘pathways’ to automatically eligible, sustainable farming models such as the organic farming model already included in the proposal.

Written by: Paula Marlene Nipper