The cost of flat-rate agri-environmental measures The Commission's proposals to require shallow, one-size-fits-all, green measures across the EU as a whole in return for a green payment in Pillar 1 have been widely criticised as overly prescriptive, yielding limited environmental benefits ('greenwash'), administratively complicated for member states and unnecessarily costly in terms of the trade-off with food production. I reviewed these criticisms in a recent note for the European Parliament's COMAGRI (link to appear when the note is published shortly). In the note I favoured a continuation of the past CAP reform trajectory in which a larger share of the CAP budget would be shifted to Pillar 2 in order to allow more ambitious and targeted agri-environmental measures (AEM). The apparent unwillingness of the Council of Ministers to countenance a larger Pillar 2 budget (presumably because of the difficulties created by the need for co-financing as well as due to political opposition from farm groups) is the biggest political obstacle to this approach. Pillar 2 agri-environment schemes not always effective However, greening through Pillar 2 is not a panacea, as the recent criticisms of Pillar 2 AEMs by the European Court of Auditors make clear. Also, the academic literature evaluating the effectiveness of Pillar 2 AEMs shows a patchy record at best, despite the considerable investment. Part of the problem is that AEMs are simplified policies in which farmers are offered a flat-rate payment in return for undertaking management actions which are presumed to have positive impacts on one or