Bioeconomy and the Common Agricultural Policy: will a strategy in search of policies meet a policy in search of strategies?

Abstract

Both the revised EU Bioeconomy strategy and the proposals for the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 2021-2027 were released in 2018. This paper explores the connection between these two policy areas, the needs for economic and policy research and the way economic literature in the field of the Bioeconomy is meeting these needs. The paper concludes that the two policies are highly complementary in principle, but the current exploitation of potential synergies is largely delegated to the implementation stage of the CAP, hence to country and local programming authorities. To make both policies effective, and to bring about constructive synergies, the availability of bridging concepts allowing for territorial-level integration of chain and ecosystem services views is key. However, on the practical side, monitoring indicators for policy and economic/management support to developing sectors is even more important. Support to innovation design, uptake and exploitation will remain key to the sector and will need a proactive and participatory collaboration among multiple actors. The increased relevance of the role of ecosystem services and environmental attention in both policies will make the results more dependent on the ability to understand the value of public goods and to incorporate them into policy design and marketing strategies.