Expectations and Reality about the Contribution of Green Direct Payment to the European Environmental Priorities

The latest reform of the Common Agri­cultural Policy (CAP) in 2013 brought seri­ous changes in the direct payments scheme, which was the main component of Pillar I. One of them is related to the introduction of com­pulsory agricultural practices, favourable to environment and climate, in response to the need for improving the environmental char­acteristics of agricultural land in the EU. The objective of this publication is to analyze the set environmental objectives in the implemen­tation of green direct payments (expectations) and to assess their implementation (reality) from environmental perspective two years af­ter their introduction. The research methodol­ogy comprises three stages: (1) analysis of the strategic documents on a European level; (2) analysis of the national implementation deci­sions taken by Bulgaria; and (3) analysis of the implementation of green direct payments in two case study regions. The main expecta­tions of the green direct payments are related to four of the European environmental priori­ties: improving soil quality, carbon sequestra­tion, conservation of environmentally sensitive permanent grasslands and biodiversity conser­vation in agricultural land. Their real implemen­tation in the case study regions reveals that (a) not all eligible agricultural land is declared for support, which reduces the scope of the ex­pected environmental impact, and the level to which this happens varies between the differ­ent municipalities; and (b) the majority of ag­ricultural producers have farms with less than 10 ha, which makes them “green by definition”, in other words, they receive green direct pay­ments without having to change their produc­tion practices.