The EU rural development policy has addressed challenges related to climate change in agriculture by introducing public voluntary schemes, which financially support the adoption of climate-smart agricultural practices. Several factors, most of which are non-financial ones, drive adoption and continuation of these schemes by farmers. Despite the importance of these factors, only a few studies explore their role in the European context. This paper contributes to filling this gap from a twofold perspective. First, it investigates the role of the farming factors, technology accessibility, environmental features, policy design and social expertise at the territorial level on early adoption. Second, it sheds light on farmers' attitudes and motivations and on social pressure on their decision to continue or discontinue the practices, by surveying a sample of early adopters. Three schemes for the Veneto region rural development programme are considered: no-tillage, fertiliser reduction, and water and fertiliser reduction. The results highlight that non-financial factors should be considered in order to design more effective schemes to prompt farmers to adopt and continue such practices over the long run. The paper also stresses the need to complement financial support with proactive information-based instruments.

In the future of European Union (EU) Cohesion Policy, a critical feature is how to capitalize on the current Research and Innovation Strategy for Smart Specialisation (RIS3), introduced in the 2014–20 programming period as an ex-ante conditionality for accessing European Structural Investment Funds. As a contribution to the current debate, this paper frames the socioeconomic comparative analysis of EU regions, considering subnational structural similarities, and referring to population, labour market and the sectoral composition of the economy. Principal component analysis and cluster analysis are performed on 31 input variables, returning 19 different types of EU regions. With an application to the EU macro-regions, the paper supports policy planning in macro-regions as a meso-level of interventions for the future Cohesion Policy.