EU auditors slam CAP ‘greening’ payments

Green payments, also known as greening, designed to encourage farmers to enhance the environmental performance of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) have made the system more complex and made little impact on farming practices, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors (ECA).

The report, entitled ‘Greening: a more complex income support scheme, not yet environmentally effective’, found greening has led to changes in farming practices on only around 5% of all EU farmland.