Within this paper, we present an interactive modelling approach to support budgeting decisions at the program level and discuss its potential and limitations to contribute to more objective-oriented policy-making. The central feature of the approach is a linear optimisation model which is interactively defined and used together with the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany. We show how the current EAFRD framework can be translated into a model, and how this provides positive learning effects and increases in-house communication and transparency. From a conceptual point of view, the case study underlines the necessity to provide a simple and applicable methodology causing certain compromises with regard to theoretical soundness.