On February 4, 2026, The University of Texas at Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs and the Ukraine Facility Platform convened an expert policy dialogue in Brussels focused on strengthening Ukraine’ delivery architecture for the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The meeting was facilitated by LBJ School Professor Sachin D. Shah using a highly interactive format designed to move from strategy to execution.
The dialogue brought together European Commission agriculture policy representatives, producer and value-chain representatives, civil society, and leading researchers to stress-test the “Roadmap for Ukraine’s Transformative Adaptation”—a policy blueprint that frames agricultural recovery and climate resilience through four linked pillars: institutional capacity, EU compliance and reforms, climate resilience, and rural development.
“What made this meeting work was the spirit of co-creation. Participants didn’t just react to the Roadmap—they helped sharpen it into actionable priorities, identify the dependencies and risks, and outline immediate steps that can be carried forward through the Ukraine Facility Platform and EU counterparts.” says Professor Shah.
Building on earlier Roadmap workshops in Washington, DC and Warsaw that helped shape the Roadmap’s CAP-readiness delivery architecture, the Brussels dialogue brought the work to the EU policy center to stress-test implementation pathways and align near-term action.
The dialogue was designed to do three things—quickly and concretely:
· Validate a realistic 24-month delivery logic for CAP-readiness and climate-aligned agricultural recovery (2026–2027).
· Surface the most binding CAP-readiness bottlenecks that could stall implementation if not addressed early.
· Converge on three keystone implementation priorities and translate them into owner-led, 90-day-start implementation packages and an EU-facing follow-through note (“Brussels Policy Implementation Note”).
What was accomplished
Across plenary and co-participatory labs, participants moved through a structured sequence of work:
· Identifying bottlenecks to capture the practical constraints to CAP-readiness delivery.
· Propose “keystone priorities”—high-leverage actions that unlock CAP-readiness delivery—with clear outcomes, owners, dependencies, risks, and best-fit EU channels.
· Convert priorities into an executable package designed to begin within 90 days.
· A final confirmation of owners and instrument-fit—ensuring each keystone priority has a credible delivery pathway and the right EU channels for follow-through.
Next steps
The immediate follow-through will focus on turning the day’s outputs into an EU-usable package by drafting and circulating a “Brussels Policy Implementation Note” outline and summary that captures the bottlenecks, the three keystone priorities, and their 90-day starts. These implementation packages will be shared and synthesized through relevant EU policy and technical channels—especially those connected to CAP implementation readiness and enlargement priorities—so partners can align support behind a small set of executable actions.