Risk management and agricultural insurance schemes in Europe

This report summarizes the results of two studies requested by the European Parliament through DG Agriculture. The current tools of EU Member States for agricultural risk management are presented, highlighting the main types of approaches. The financial volumes of insurances and ad-hoc state aids are compared. For meteorological events that are typically local, such as hail, the available insurance products are generally sufficient, but coverage of systemic events, such as drought, needs to be boosted in most countries. The level of some major risks is quantified and mapped with the help of the meteorological database of MARS unit of JRC. The suitability of index insurances is analysed; the principle is that compensation to farmers is trigged by yield statistics, agro-meteorological indexes or satellite images; the results suggest that such insurances are appropriate only when individual damage assessment is too difficult to carry out.