## 3 Evaluation of Needs of Greek Agriculture in the Context of the New CAP  
As mentioned in earlier sections, the CAP aims to support farmers and promote sustainable agriculture. However, the CAP also has to balance the goal of promoting competitiveness in the agricultural sector with the objective of achieving sustainable development. This can lead to conflicting objectives and trade-offs between the CAP and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). For example, the CAP financing can support the competitiveness of farmers, but it may also lead to a decrease in the sustainability of farming practices. Additionally, the CAP's focus on maintaining high prices for agricultural products may lead to trade-offs with other SDGs such as poverty reduction and food security. The link between sustainability and competitiveness in agriculture is a complex and rather recently emerging research topic, while the coupled achievement of both these two goals it requires careful policy design and implementation [46]. Direct payments, which are largely used to protect farmers' earnings, account for close to 70% of the CAP budget. Direct payments were implemented 25 years ago to cushion the effects of reform, but their validity is now questioned. Further evidence that direct payments are indeed biased toward high-income farming regions comes from the fact that the per-hectare allocation of direct payments resulted in an unavoidable bias towards large farmers. As of 2018, 2.2% of farms in the EU-28 (receiving more than 50,000 euros) take up a total of 28.2% of all payments [44]. Such distributions, on the levels of farming and regions, are unlikely to revert inequalities within the agricultural sector, thus conflicting with both the income objective of the CAP and the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 10. The financing of the interventions of the new CAP has been the subject of intensive and long-term consultation by the EU Member States, given the different national objectives and interests and competition with the other Union policies claiming resources from its budget. Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic also put serious pressure on the availability and prioritization of resources ultimately allocated to its different strategies through the Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027 and the European Recovery Instrument (EMA) set up to address the economic impact of the pandemic. This resulted in a reduction of about 12% in the total resources of the new CAP compared to the previous one, taking into account the EMA's contribution, with Greece recording noticeable losses from the new allocation, as it secured funding of about 14.3 billion euros [47]. The effects of climate change on the country's most important high-productivity agricultural areas, Central and Eastern Macedonia, Thessaly, and Western Peloponnese, are attributed to the significant moisture deficit and the reduction in water reserves due to reduced rainfall and rising temperatures, especially during the summer months. Basic crops, such as vine, olive, wheat, fruit, and vegetables, will be affected in the future, differentiating their yield and areas of prosperity according to the conditions. The CAP's reform towards increased environmental care and overall climate awareness is strengthened over time and is now becoming \"irreversible\" through ambitious EU strategies such as \"Farm to Fork\" and \"Biodiversity\" which fall under the European Green Deal, which set out the terms of agriculture's green transformation. Aside from the centrally mandated policy, the total GHGs emissions from agriculture decreased by 23.26% between 1990 and 2020 [48]. The greatest share is emissions of methane (CH\({}_{4}\)) and nitrous oxide (N\({}_{2}\)O), whose main sources are the intestinal fermentation processes of animals and the use of synthetic fertilizers, respectively.