The contribution of modeling tools to deal with the challenges of CAP policy evaluation

A very positive development in the last decade has been the increased interest of agricultural economists in ex post modeling. So far however this has not resulted in a strong increase of the use of modeling for ex post CAP evaluation purposes. It can be expected that the need for evidence based evaluation of the CAP, based on specific modeling tools for that purpose, will increase in the coming years. The more important role of the EU budget authority, the European Parliament, following the Lisbon Treaty is one of the driving factors of this increasing need. The EU 2020 strategy shows a political shift from the market liberalization processes of the past decades aiming at efficiency, such as the Internal Market, towards policies promoting stability and equity. The recent economic crisis and climate change adds to this. The effect of this will be that CAP policies will have to be evaluated more from a holistic and European added value perspective. In order to increase for the sake of good governance the role of ex post evaluation modeling, agricultural economists will succeed in providing and using excellent modeling tools if they are capable to formulate an agenda how to match their modeling tools in time with the substantially changing CAP and EU policies and their objectives.