On 25 September 2025, BrightSpace participated in the Feedback to Policy Cluster Meeting – Models and Tools Supporting Agricultural Policies: a Horizon Update, hosted by the European Commission’s Research Executive Agency (REA) in Brussels. The event organized in the framework of the 2025 Feedback to Policy plan gathered policymakers from across the European Commission services and representatives of the relevant Horizon Europe projects to discuss how advanced modelling can inform the design of a competitive, resilient, and sustainable agri-food sector in the context of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) post-2027. This feedback to policy event promotes the uptake of research findings into policymaking. It helps policymakers to access and use evidence when making policy choices.
The cluster meeting provided a platform to:
- strengthen collaboration between projects and EU institutions.
- present project results and methodological advances,
- ensure policy feedback on modelling needs and research questions, and
ACT4CAP27 Contributions
In Session 1, ACT4CAP27 coordinator Siemen van Berkum (Wageningen Social & Economic Research) joined BrightSpace and LAMASUS colleagues to present the joint perspective paper on the conceptual and technical challenges of projecting baselines for agricultural policy analysis. The paper, available here, stresses the need for common assumptions, transparent baselines, and integration of cross-cutting factors such as climate change, trade disruptions, and technological developments.
In Session 3, ACT4CAP27 showcased its work on addressing modelling gaps in EU food system sustainability. The project has reviewed CAP 2023–27 coverage in existing models and found that only about 20% of policy instruments are explicitly represented. ACT4CAP27 is advancing modelling capacity by:
- Extending CAPRI to include antimicrobial use.
- Expanding AGMEMOD to better capture conditional income support.
- Developing a biodiversity assessment pipeline in GLOBIOM.
- Improving representation of environmental schemes and consumer health in MAGNET.
Collaboration Across Projects
The event also featured contributions from BrightSpace, LAMASUS, Tools4CAP, and AgEnRes, showcasing diverse ways of advancing agricultural modelling. Together, these projects are building a stronger evidence base for EU agricultural and food system policies.
