Agriculture is currently facing major challenges related to ensuring the food security of a rising population and climate change with extreme weather patterns. At the same time, agriculture is a cause of environmental degradation, pollution and biodiversity loss. Climate-smart agriculture (CSA) is proposed as an approach that provides a roadmap to sustainable agricultural development. Despite this, farmer adoption rates of CSA practices and technologies in Europe remain low. This paper seeks to systematically review and synthesize the factors that facilitate or hinder farmers’ uptake of CSA in Europe. Out of the 2827 articles identified in the Web of Science and Scopus databases, a total of 137 research articles were included for analysis following the PRISMA methodology. The factors are categorized into seven categories, namely socio-demographics, psychological, farm characteristics, practice/technology-related attributes, biotic/abiotic, systemic and policy factors, with the majority of the studies focusing on the first four categories, while systemic and policy factors are relatively understudied. The results highlight for the first time that the adoption of CSA does not depend solely on farmer characteristics but also on the food systems and structures in which farmers operate, as well as the interactions with other value chain actors. To promote the adoption of CSA practices, extension and advisory services along with access to timely and reliable information, play a vital role in increasing awareness and in the provision of training and the encouragement of farmers’ behavioral shifts towards sustainable practices. From a technological point of view, adapting technologies to be easy to use, compatible with current farming objectives and cost-efficient will render them less risky investments for farmers and will foster adoption rates. Finally, support from the government in terms of financial support, subsidies and reduced bureaucratic procedures is crucial for motivating CSA adoption.

This article compares the functioning of the intergovernmental systems in Italy and Spain facing the COVID-19 crisis. Combining the public administration literature on policy learning and multi-level governance with that on the institutional collective action framework, this article analyses if and how Italy and Spain have reacted and learned from the external pressures of the pandemic, leading to institutional adjustments to the respective multi-level governance systems in the de-escalation of the first emergency phase. In doing so, the article tests the general hypothesis that the existing political structures and dynamics are a crucial variable to explain the different performance in the pandemic response management. The framework presented in this article could be extended to other countries that follow a federal logic in healthcare provision by public administration scholars who are interested in crisis management studies.

The term “España Vaciada” has recently been coined to define the long-term trend of depopulation in Spain´s inland areas. It has gained traction as it spilled over from a local issue to the national agenda. At the same time, the European Union has made steps to give greater prevalence to the topic of demographic decline. This article maps out and provides a narrative of the failed attempts of territorial mobilisation around this issue since 2016. It examines a number of territorial actors as they try to are shape both Spain´s Demographic strategy against demographic decline as well as their rent-seeking efforts towards EU Cohesion Policy post 2020 by way of maps and a novel definition. They try to address the same territorial challenge, the growing depopulation of vast areas of inland Spain, but are unable to coalesce around common solutions due to their different priorities and approaches.

EU Cohesion Policy is more than an economic policy programme. Cohesion Policy implied the creation of new laws emanating from the EU Treaties. This legislation heavily influenced the legal definitions that govern the EU Structural and Investments Funds across decades. While a significant degree of legal path dependency exists, the changes in the Regulations reflect the pressures pulling Cohesion Policy in various directions, stretching its internal consistency and purpose. This chapter analyses the legal provisions of the Cohesion Policy by looking at the changes from 2014-2020 to the new 2021-2027 programming period, summarising key legal principles, the policy territoriality, and the main challenges.

This chapter examines the prospective future survival of the EU Cohesion Policy post-2027. Over the last decades, a layering process has affected this policy, going well beyond its original mission of a multi-level, place-based, medium-term investment policy. CP moved towards addressing more comprehensive structural reforms, macroeconomic conditionalities and good governance. Additionally, each incoming EU Commission introduced its imprint, even when CP design or implementation cycles had already been quite advanced. The ultimate test is the creation of a new fund package: the ‘Next Generation EU’. Its largest component, the Recovery and Resilience Facility, is tasked with financing similar investments. However, it has a drastically different intervention logic, funding sources and management processes than CP. These factors make it likely that the post-2027 CP will be far different from the last three decades: from multi-level and long-term policy to multi-layered and shorter-term policy.