A critical review of EU agri-food policy impacts
这篇综述梳理了97篇同行研究，发现欧盟农业食品政策在环境、社会和经济维度上效果不均，主要受制于执行差距、治理冲突和目标模糊，对政策制定者和研究者有参考价值。
• Literature on EU agri-food policies show limited and often uneven impacts across dimensions. • Policy effectiveness is highly heterogeneous across Member States and regions. • Compliance, governance, and targeting emerge as key recurring policy challenges. • Lack of outcome-based indicators and data limits evaluation of policy impacts. • Stronger governance is needed to align EU agri-food policies with sustainability. The European Union’s agri-food policies aim to balance productivity with environmental, social, and economic sustainability. However, their overall effectiveness remains debated due to fragmented evidence and inconsistent implementation. This study critically reviews the literature on the cumulative impacts of EU policies governing primary agricultural production, focusing on six sectors: the Common Agricultural Policy, genetically modified organisms, pesticide, fertilizers, fisheries, and animal health and welfare. Using a two-step approach, we first mapped EU-level policies, retaining 38 policies that met predefined criteria (binding EU scope, production-related, impact-oriented, and active since 2000). We then conducted a qualitative synthesis of 97 peer-reviewed studies (from 1.359 retrieved), coding the environmental, social, and economic impacts reported in these studies. Results reveal three systemic weaknesses limiting policy effectiveness across sectors: i) compliance gaps, where high implementation costs and limited enforcement create uneven outcomes across actors and Member States; ii) governance tensions, driven by subsidiarity ambiguities and fragmented decision-making; and iii) targeting deficiencies, where vague objectives reduce effectiveness and accountability. Environmentally, region-specific agri-environmental measures show localized benefits but fail to address systemic pressures like persistent nitrate pollution and delays in pesticide reassessments. Socially, advances in food safety and animal welfare coexist with exclusionary effects, notably the marginalization of small-scale fishers. Economically, compliance costs disproportionately burden smaller operators, while larger actors tend to leverage regulatory complexity and loopholes to their advantages. To overcome these structural challenges, the EU must set clearer objectives aligned with long-term sustainability goals, streamline decision-making responsibilities across governance levels, and implement robust outcome-based monitoring to ensure adaptability and accountability.