D3.1 - Report on Key Challenges for Decision Making

This deliverable gives an overview of the challenges that actors face in the CSP design and monitoring process in different EU Member States and throughout the design steps. Based on these challenges and drawing from the Tools4CAP inventory and literature review, it outlines good practices in the CSP design process as well as promising practices relating to other European and selected international policy strategy development processes with a particular emphasis on sustainable development.Based on the outcomes of 12 focus groups reports (see Deliverable 6.5), a literature review in 18 MS and a EU level online survey (n=38), the report shows what challenges emerge in the different MS at different policy steps and groups challenges into five clusters (Data coverage, availability and relevance; Current multi-level governance of the CAP and its complexity; Lack of capacities; Lack of accountability and transparency; Obstacles to evidence-based policy making). A joint analysis of the outcomes of the focus group reports, the literature analysis and the online survey shows that challenges resulting from the current multi-level governance of the CAP and its complexity as well as timing issues are the most common. Coordination between the national and the regional level, lack of transparency concerning decision-making processes or consultation results, as well as hurdles related to the volume and/or complexity of CAP documents and technical problems, are also among the most mentioned challenges.While there are some challenges, such as the complexity of the CAP’s architecture and timing issues, that need to be tackled at EU-policy level, new and improved tools are promising to tackle other challenges. This is exemplified in good practices of (a) tools for the prioritisation of needs and objectives, (b) tools to support intervention setting, coherence and impact assessment as well as (c) approaches for stakeholder consultation