Greece's CAP Agri-Environment-Climate Payments — Extensive Farming & Organic Transition

Greece has run a national agri-environment-climate payment scheme since Measure 10 of its 2014-2022 Rural Development Programme (adopted by the European Commission in December 2015), with an indicative allocation of €622.3 million (about 8% of the €7.78 billion programme). The scheme pays farmers, via the Ministry of Rural Development and Food and its paying agency OPEKEPE, for practices such as organic farming and livestock maintenance, extensive grazing, terraced-land upkeep, and protection of high-environmental-value landscapes, alongside Pillar-II compensatory payments for farming in mountainous and other naturally constrained areas.

Under the current CAP Strategic Plan (2023-2027), the scheme aims to sustain extensive/organic farming, protect landscapes of high environmental value, and support Natura 2000 biodiversity outcomes (bird and large-carnivore coexistence, organic beekeeping, autochthonous-breed conservation) alongside continued compensatory payments in naturally constrained farming areas.

In its first CAP Strategic Plan implementation year (16 October 2023 to 15 October 2024), Greece's Annual Performance Report — accepted by the European Commission in October 2025 — recorded real disbursements: €164.3 million for organic-farming maintenance across 750,984 ha (138% of planned area, 70% of planned budget); €12.4 million for extensive-grazing livestock management across 487,267 ha (59% of plan); and €240.5 million in compensatory payments for farming in areas with natural constraints (102% of plan, fully executed). Terraced-cultivation maintenance reached only 29% of its planned budget (€3.25m of €11.25m planned) and landscape-protection payments only 13% (€0.40m of €3.15m planned). Several of the most directly biodiversity-targeted interventions — including Natura 2000 bird and large-carnivore (wolf and bear) coexistence payments, organic-farming conversion, organic beekeeping, and autochthonous-breed conservation — recorded zero actual payments in this first year, attributed to IT-system and call-publication delays, and the report's own Natura 2000/forest-land commitment indicator (targeted at 6,675 ha) was not met.

This pattern echoes longer-standing gaps in Greek agri-environment uptake — Eurostat recorded only 1.8% of Greek utilised agricultural area under agri-environmental commitments in 2013 — and is consistent with the European Court of Auditors' general findings on agri-environment schemes across the EU (vague objectives, weak outcome monitoring, imperfect targeting), though Greece was not among the ECA's specific audited case-study countries.