The proposed Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the period 2021–2027 will be more flexible and, presumably, more effective. To provide for sufficient ambition and prevent a race to the bottom, national strategic plans will be introduced with quantitative targets covering both policy pillars. This article argues that since formal requirements and the evaluation model are weak on actual long-term impact, substantial improvements are unlikely. To test this, programming rules are experimentally evaluated on the implementation of CAP 2014–2020 in Slovenia. The experiment shows that while measures and resources broadly correspond to policy objectives, the specific relevance of measures is generally weak and has potential effects dispersed among several objectives, resulting in high costs for individual objectives at best. Without the effective inclusion of an impact assessment, the outcome will rely on the capacity and benevolence of national governance systems.

The bioeconomy occupies the centre of the Green Deal, the EU’s plan to support transformative growth following the COVID-19 episode. However, parts of the EU, such as countries in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) continue to lag behind in harnessing the potential held by the bioeconomy. This article argues that in CEE countries, where the primary and conventional bioeconomy sectors play a more important role, ‘early’ transition pathways such as improvements in productivity and practice- as well as commercialisation-oriented innovation (the do–use–interact model: DUI) are just as important as approaches based on (generally publicly supported) R&D, innovation adoption, and technology transfer (science–technology–innovation model: STI), typically associated with high-value bioindustrial applications. The argument is tested by conducting a survey of 352 experts in the region that gives an insight into the CEE macro-region’s assets with respect to deploying the bioeconomy’s potential and assessing the transition pathways relevant to the better performance of bioeconomy (primary, manufacturing, and other related) sectors. The results show the particular relevance of consolidating the primary and traditional sectors to support improvements in productivity based on the vertical and horizontal interaction typically associated with DUI, while the relevance of STI is mostly linked to advanced sectors, which are narrowly distributed across the region. The findings are relevant to policy given that the EU’s bioeconomy policy has thus far chiefly focused on STI support that better corresponds to the needs of countries at more advanced stages of developing the bioeconomy, but is less appropriate for the specific context and needs of CEE.

Since the 1980s, the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy has undergone a series of reforms that were facilitated by the changes in decision-making rules such as the introduction of the qualified majority vote. This article argues that the introduction of the co-decision procedure under the Lisbon Treaty, which increased the European Parliament’s legislative powers, has generated a “co-decision trap” that has hindered further reforms.