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?? 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).Ecological focus areas are one of three greening measures that were introduced into the European Common Agricultural Policy by the reform in 2014, with the aim of enhancing the ecological function of agricultural landscapes. However, there are concerns that they will provide little or no additional ecological benefit (enhanced biodiversity and ecosystem services) as those that are declared may already exist and/or any new areas will be implemented on the basis of farm management burdens rather than ecological criteria, such as those which are the easiest or least costly to implement. To implement ecological focus areas to achieve greater benefits requires taking account of numerous spatial and management parameters, scientific understanding of ecosystem services, and the needs and behaviour individual and communities of species. Such an approach is not readily practical or feasible for many farm and land managers. This paper describes the development of an indicator framework which aims to distil this complex scientific information to aid decision making with regard to the implementation of ecological focus areas to enhance and increase benefits for ecosystem services and biodiversity. It involved collating scientific evidence from over 350 papers, reports and guides and then structuring this evidence to form the indicator framework. 230 impacts were identified for 20 land uses and landscape features, and these are characterised using 138 parameters and attributes, containing 708 descriptive classes. The framework aims to help land managers identify the potential benefits and burdens of different options for the specific spatial and management context of their farm, and thus select those with greatest benefits and least burden for their circumstances. Ecological focus areas are part of the first evolution of greening measures, so there is scope to improve them to make their implementation more ecological and more focused. Tools, such as the indicator framework presented herein, have the potential to support this process by educating and raising awareness of potential impacts, facilitating the transfer of scientific knowledge, and resulting in a more ecological aware industry

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The concept of Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC) was introduced by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) reform in 2003 within the framework of cross-compliance and implemented by the Member States since 2005. It includes the purposes of maintaining agricultural activities, avoiding the abandonment of the agricultural land and sustaining the environment. While Statutory Management Requirements (SMR), second component of the cross compliance, have introduced the link between CAP payments and the respect of existing legislative acts in the fields of environment, public, animal and plant health and animal welfare, the GAEC represent a new piece of legislation that farmer shall be compliant with (in order to receive full CAP payments) in strategic areas as soil, land management and, more recently after the Health Check in 2009, water management. The implementation of GAEC is thus a process where Member States play a decisive role as the European legislative framework leaves flexibility to them to define the precise content of a GAEC minimum requirement taking into account local conditions. In fact, the definition of GAEC requirements should take into account the objectives that GAEC is expected to introduce in the CAP such as avoiding the abandonment of agricultural land, assuring a minimum level of sustainability of farming practices, recognizing the strict link between agriculture activities and the management of land and landscape....

Background: This systematic map protocol responds to an urgent policy need to evaluate key environmental benefits of new compulsory greening measures in the European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), with the aim of building a policy better linked to environmental performance. The systematic map will focus on Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs), in which larger arable farmers must dedicate 5% of their arable land to ecologically beneficial habitats, landscape features and land uses. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre has used a software tool called the 'EFA calculator' to inform the European Commission about environmental benefits of EFA implementation. However, there are gaps in the EFA calculator's coverage of ecosystem services, especially 'global climate regulation' , and an opportunity to use systematic mapping methods to enhance its capture of evidence, in advance of forthcoming CAP reforms. We describe a method for assembling a database of relevant, peer-reviewed research conducted in all agricultural landscapes in Europe and neighbouring countries with similar biogeography, addressing the primary question: what are the impacts of selected EFA features in agricultural land on two policy-relevant ecosystem service outcomes-global climate regulation and pollination? The method is streamlined to allow results in good time for the current, time-limited opportunity to influence reforms of the CAP greening measures at European and Member State level. Methods: We will search four bibliographic databases in English, using a predefined and tested search string that focuses on a subset of EFA options and ecosystem service outcomes. The options and outcomes are selected as those with particular policy relevance and traction. Only articles in English will be included. We will screen search results at title, abstract and full text levels, recording the number of studies deemed non-relevant (with reasons at full text). A systematic map database that displays the meta-data (i.e. descriptive summary information about settings and methods) of relevant studies will be produced following full text assessment. The systematic map database will be published as a MS-Excel database. The nature and extent of the evidence base will be discussed, and the applicability of methods to convert the available evidence into EFA calculator scores will be assessed.

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Summary The reformed Common Agricultural Policy includes a mandatory ‘greening’ component for direct payments, implementation of which has started in 2015. Two of the measures introduced (crop diversification and ecological focus area) will not be applied in holdings with AL below specific thresholds (10, 15 and 30 ha). This article uses statistical data on different territories and agricultural systems in order to assess the possible impacts of these exclusions. It investigates if and in which regions this exemption may generate a theoretical loss of environmental protection, depending on farming systems and current level of semi‐natural vegetation. The analysis sketches a complex picture and highlights the regions where the exclusion from these two measures may generate greater issues. Noticeably, considering those regions where there is a major prevalence of specialist cereals farming systems, these greening measures concern 97 per cent of all AL. Regions with current low values of semi‐natural vegetation where more than half of AL is exempt from greening are relatively few. Member States may consider adopting specific targeted policy in these regions. Applying a set of decision thresholds to fine‐tune the analysis, the GIS created could be used as a decision support tool by national and regional authorities.