KOPOP — Slovenia's Agri-Environment-Climate Payments Scheme

KOPOP is Slovenia's Agri-Environment-Climate Payments scheme, run by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Food (MKGP) through the Agency for Agricultural Markets and Rural Development (ARSKTRP) under the country's 2023-2027 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) Strategic Plan, building on agri-environment schemes dating to Slovenia's 2004 EU accession.
EUR 519.6 million is budgeted for KOPOP interventions across 2023-2027, co-financed up to 80% by the EU's European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. According to Slovenia's official 2024 CAP Annual Performance Report, the scheme's "Natural Resources" sub-measures (covering water and soil stewardship) supported about 190,000 ha and paid out EUR 39 million in 2024 alone, with roughly 29% of that area under dedicated Water Resources operations; a smaller "Climate Change" sub-measure (livestock feed/ration measures) covered 291 ha for EUR 199,000.
Independent, peer-reviewed research offers a more mixed picture: a Land Use Policy study found the 2007-2013 iteration of Slovenia's agri-environment measures showed "almost complete failure" to conserve species-rich extensive grasslands, citing absent pre-selection criteria and weak monitoring; a separate peer-reviewed analysis of 2008-2019 data found a negative relationship between CAP direct payments and farmland bird diversity, with agri-environment/greening measures showing only negligible positive effect. KOPOP nonetheless offers unusually strong transparency for a national PES scheme: it operates under a published, government-audited Annual Performance Report and EU Commission oversight (CAP-my-country), giving external researchers the data needed to identify and publish these very shortcomings — a governance strength even where ecological effectiveness is contested.

Read the full analysis: https://www.gov.si/assets/organi-v-sestavi/ARSKTRP/SNP/Letno-porocilo-o-smotnosti/Letno-porocilo-o-smotrnosti-SN-2023-2027-za-leto-2024.pdf