From sectoral policy change to cross-sectoral (dis)integration? A longitudinal analysis of the EU's forest and rural development policy

Policy integration (PI) is critical to address cross-cutting challenges like climate change and biodiversity loss holistically. In the European Union, forests are confronting increasingly adverse climatic conditions and numerous stressors that impact their biodiversity. Political efforts to counteract these trends are mainly channeled through funding from the rural development policy as a pivotal part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In contrast, forest policy is hardly institutionalized at EU level. This study employs process tracing using 65 EU forest and rural development policy documents, including legal acts, preparatory documents, communications, related working documents and evaluation reports, predominantly produced over the last 25 years. By doing this, it examines the development of sectoral policy changes over time and their implications for the cross-sectoral integration of EU forest policy into rural development policy as part of agricultural policy at EU level. Results suggest that the adoption of the EU Forest Strategy for 2030 represented a provisional paradigm shift in EU forest policy. This shift is characterized by a substantial reprioritization of policy objectives, transitioning from an emphasis on economic aspects to a more climate- and biodiversity-centric approach, alterations in supported policy instruments and the introduction of various new regulatory instruments. On the other hand, the CAP and its rural development policy remain characterized by a path dependent incremental change and the latest reforms hardly reflect ambitious forest policy objectives both from budgetary and content perspectives. The findings suggest that the latest seemingly decoupled developments within both policy areas have led to an emergence of forest policy fragmentation at the EU level.