Policy layering in EU carbon farming governance: insights from eight EU Member States

La superposition des politiques dans la gouvernance de l'agriculture carbone au sein de l'UE: enseignements tirés de huit États membres de l'UE

Susanna Esther Hönle, Claudia Heidecke, Laure Bamière (), Ennio Facq, Ilaria Falconi, Frederik Gerits, Morten Graversgaard, Jana Poláková, Albert Bene Smit and Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe
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Susanna Esther Hönle: HU Berlin - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin = Humboldt University of Berlin = Université Humboldt de Berlin
Claudia Heidecke: Coordination Unit Climate, Soil, Biodiversity - Thuenen-Institute
Laure Bamière: UMR PSAE - Paris-Saclay Applied Economics - AgroParisTech - Université Paris-Saclay - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Ennio Facq: Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Ilaria Falconi: CREA - Consiglio per la Ricerca in Agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria = Council for Agricultural Research and Economics
Frederik Gerits: Flanders Research Institute for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food
Morten Graversgaard: Department of Agroecology - Aarhus University [Aarhus]
Jana Poláková: Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources - CZU - Czech University of Life Sciences Prague
Albert Bene Smit: WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
Martin Hvarregaard Thorsøe: Department of Agroecology - Aarhus University [Aarhus]

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Abstract: Carbon farming has become an increasingly prominent concept in European climate and agricultural policy, particularly in the context of efforts to strengthen carbon removals from the land sector. In parallel, the European Union adopted the Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming Regulation (CRCF) in 2024, adding a new certification-based governance layer to an already dense landscape of public agricultural support instruments and diverse private initiatives. This article examines how this evolving policy field is perceived by national experts across eight EU Member States. Drawing on expert survey data collected in 2023, we analyse expert perceptions of carbon farming relevance, the potential and barriers of different practices, the status of monitoring, reporting and verification, and expectations regarding private initiatives. The results indicate that carbon-farming-related practices are currently supported mainly through existing CAP instruments rather than through coherent stand-alone carbon-farming strategies, and that inventory visibility of these measures remains limited and highly heterogeneous across countries. We interpret these patterns as indications of policy layering, in which new governance instruments are being added to established agricultural and climate policy architectures, without changing the existing policy structure. The type of layering varies by dimension: while some complementarities between CAP and CRCF incentives for farmers exist, the absence of reliable demand structures for CRCF credits and structural incompatibilities between CRCF certification and national climate accounting systems point towards an inefficient outcome and counter-productive layering, respectively. Unless these challenges are addressed, the CRCF risks remaining a layered instrument without real integration into national policy frameworks and with low climate impact.

Keywords: Carbon Farming; Carbon removal method; Agricultural climate policy; Common Agricultural Policy; CRCF regulation; Policy layering (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-08-01
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Published in Environmental Sciences Europe , 2026, 38 (1), pp.147. ⟨10.1186/s12302-026-01475-9⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05736653

DOI: 10.1186/s12302-026-01475-9

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