Semi-structured interviews on Opportunities, Threats and Responsabilities to policies for the potential expansion of agroecology across Europe

The AE-Transect project is divided in 7 Work Packages aiming at conceptualising agroecology for climate change mitigation, unfolding the local potential of agroecology, promoting knowledge sharing and scaling out and scaling up solutions through market and policy instruments. The interviews compiled in this dataset constitute the raw data used for the OTR (Opportunities, Threats, Responsabilities) analysis for upscaling agroecology across Europe in WP6.1. 61 semi-structured interviews (63 respondants), with stakeholders and experts, were conducted between April and November 2025 in four European territories (Innovations Hubs, IH), in Hungary, Denmark, France and Guadeloupe, and at EU (European Union) level. The sample included experts and stakeholders at several levels: at IH with expertise either at regional and national level and at EU level, reflecting EU level processes (see the Table below). IH Guadeloupe IH France IH Denmark IH Hungary EU level Policy designer 1 0 1 0 6 Policy implementer 6 2 0 0 0 Journalist 1 0 1 0 0 Knowledgeable farmer / Union farmer 3 1 1 0 0 Agricultural consultant 2 0 3 3 2 Knowledgeable NGO 0 0 1 0 4 Farmers' association / NGO 2 0 0 1 0 Researcher / Teacher 3 3 2 2 2 Technical Institute / Extension services 2 3 0 3 0 Each interview lasted approximately one hour and was structured around 6 sections: Project presentation and GDPR consent Overview of the study objectives Icebreaker question on respondants' understanding of agroecology Respondent caracterizations including their level of operation and perceived sphere of impact Identification of key market and policy instruments supporting agroecology in the respondent's context followed by a systemic exploration of Opportunities and Threats across each of the 6 PESTEL (Politic, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal) dimensions Discussion of Responsabilities exploring who respondents believed should drive the expansion of agroecology and identify bottlenecks.