How to evaluate the impacts of policies aiming at a sustainable CAP and a multifunctional agriculture? The enriched PAM framework

The challenges of agricultural policy evaluation change with the evolution of the CAP. The CAP, well-known for its classical common market organizations for key products such as wheat and dairy, has significantly changed over time. After having been ignored in the past sustainability has become increasingly important. Not only the policy objectives have widened, but also the policy measures have become more varied, with regulations and standards, and direct payments made conditional on compliance with these standards (cross compliance) gaining weight relative to price support and other incentive policies .In the paper the PAM policy evaluation framework is discussed and extended to take properly into account the changed policy environment. Things being considered are the role on green services and public goods, negative externalities, climate change, transaction costs and budget issues. Moreover, a number of well-known indicators, among which those indicating competitiveness, are revised. Finally, as an illustration the enriched PAM framework is applied to the case of the Dutch dairy sector, with a focus on the impact of the milk quota regime (relative to a constructed counterfactual in which quota are abolished).