"The EU failed to stand to the promises of greening the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP)": these are the conclusions of an academic paper published today in the prestigious journal Science.

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The paper, EU agricultural reform fails on Biodiversity, which was written by a range of experts from across Europe warns that "After three years of CAP negotiations the environmental reforms are so diluted they will be of no benefit to European wildlife, and biodiversity will continue to decline across the continent."

As a result of lobbying from industry and sympathetic member states, the authors warn, "The European Union's recent agricultural reforms are far too weak to have any positive impact on the continent's shrinking farmland biodiversity… despite political proclamation of increased environmental focus."

In July last year, ahead of the CAP deal struck in September, another groundbreaking report, by contributors to the UK government's National Ecosystem Assessment in 2011, concluded that CAP spending provides "poor value for society." The researchers, from the University of East Anglia, urged action from EU legislators, illustrating how the current CAP set-up saddles the public with "considerable financial and environmental costs… allowing land use to be determined purely by an agricultural market, which is distorted by multi-billion pound subsidies."

The CAP budget totals €360 billion (£292bn); the publicly funded subsidy scheme accounts for 40 percent of the entire EU budget.

In response to criticism of the old policy, the EU announced that the environment and climate change would be core issues in the new policy package. The Commission therefore proposed making 30 percent of direct payments to farmers conditional on compliance with three greening measures: establishing Ecological Focus Areas (EFA), maintaining permanent grasslands, and setting minimum requirements on the number of crops that should be grown, to avoid widespread conversion of croplands into monocultures.

Although these measures were fiercely opposed by industry, including the NFU in the UK, which has dismissed the three crop rule as "utter madness," recent research findings and the conclusions of March's IPCC report (which found climate change is already having a discernible impact on agriculture) suggest farmers may need to grow more crops just to survive in the face of changing temperature and rainfall patterns.

Almost 90 percent of EU farmers exempted from greening measures

Even so, greening measures were successfully weakened, which led environmentalists and public interest groups to condemn the reform process last year. On Friday, following a thorough evaluation of the reformed CAP, the authors of the Science paper revealed that the broad number of exemptions introduced to the greening measures will exempt over 88 percent of the farmers in the EU, and over 48 percent of agricultural land. They concluded that between 80 and 90 percent of farmers would be exempted from two of the three headline measures.

The study found that most of the new rules governing reforms are so vague as to be useless. Dr Guy Pe'er, a lead author from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research, said "The measures themselves do not include quality criteria for what counts as green. The thresholds set will allow on-going intensification under a green label."

The authors, led by Lynn Dicks from the University of Cambridge, warned that the greening measures and renationalisation of some aspects of the reformed CAP (including modulation – allowing a portion of funding to be transferred between the two CAP pillars) could be more environmentally damaging that the previous, weak policy. The majority of states are expected to move CAP funds away from the Rural Development Pillar (Two) and into the subsidy pot (Pillar One) – only the UK and Portugal have ever moved funds in the opposite direction.

Defra Secretary Owen Paterson's plans to move the full 15 percent of funds allowed for modulation were scuppered when farming lobbyists went over his head to the Prime Minister, forcing his hand, with the result that modulation to Pillar Two will now only be 12 percent of the UK's CAP allocation.

Six recommendations for member states

The Science authors urged EU and national leaders to act on their findings, arguing that the fate of Europe's environment is now dependent on the choices governments make over the coming months. Member states must inform the Commission of their plans for the more flexible aspects of CAP by 1st August.

The expert authors – who range from scientists to policy analysts and conservationists – offered six 'immediate actions' that states should take. These include comprehensive mapping of existing grasslands and increasing the availability of ecological expertise to farmers. They have urged state governments to maintain or increase funding for agri-environment schemes, protect species-rich grassland habitats, and implement policies that favour responsible farming practices, ones that protect diverse ecosystems.

They also made six recommendations for the EU to consider towards the next reform process in 2020. The report found that meeting EU's own biodiversity targets for 2020 now relies on initiatives from member states themselves.

Ariel Brunner, from Birdlife Europe commented on the findings, "We can only hope that Commissioner Cioloş and his successor will not ignore the new evidence. On our side we'll keep campaigning for a review of the new CAP and, at national level, for governments to use the flexibility they’re given to stop the destruction of farmland ecosystems."

EU farm group Copa Cogeca has claimed that the Commission's initial greening proposals would not have had any environmental benefits, as they were too rigid, and that a "one size fits all" approach would not have worked, given the diversity of European farmland.

Even so, Faustine Defossez, of the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), slammed the reformed policy, "While scientists tell us that the supposedly 'green' CAP will in fact continue to damage the environment, some Member States are already using the flexibility they were granted to make things even worse. Giving a green label and hence an extra payment to maize monocultures is frankly farcical. The same goes with Member States allowing pesticides and fertilizers to be sprayed on so called Ecological Focus Areas."

Lead report author Lynn Dicks concluded, "The CAP should pay for 'public goods' associated with sustainable farming: thriving wildlife, beautiful landscapes, clean water, fertile soils, land that contributes to a stable climate, and diverse communities of wild insects to pollinate crops or regulate pest outbreaks. These are things enjoyed by everyone but not so easy to pay for through food sales."

Last month, the EU Commission also withdrew its planned Soils Framework Directive, which had been halted at the draft stage for eight years, also the result of concerted lobbying from industry and blocking states, including the UK government. The decision to withdraw the Framework proposals leaves soils in the UK at "crisis point", and without any effective legal protection. It attracted wholesale condemnation from greens.