Published on 12 November 2026
France caps how much of a parcel the panels can cover, and Italy asks for a sworn production figure. Germany pays raised systems a small bonus but has never run an Agri-PV tender of its own. Poland and the UK have no Agri-PV rules at all.
Those rules matter, but they're rarely the last word. In all six markets a local or regional authority can stop a project the rules allow, and in four of them the grid can. Our new guide sets out what the EU decides and one screening order for every market. Then each market gets a page on the three things that decide a project there.
Download the full guide here.
There's no EU legal definition of agrivoltaics. RED III, the revised Renewable Energy Directive, caps permit-granting time at 12 months inside an acceleration area and 24 months outside one. But 26 of 27 member states got a letter of formal notice after the May 2025 transposition deadline passed. So how far that clock reaches still depends on the country. The guide covers the three EU levers that do reach a parcel, including the one that decides whether the farmer keeps CAP payments.
France, Italy and Germany each cap how much of a site the installation can take, and each divides a different area. France measures projected module area over the parcel. Italy's LAOR divides module surface by system surface, and Germany counts the farmland lost to structures. The cap also applies at a different stage: the permit in France, incentives in Italy, and the EEG category and planning privilege in Germany. The guide sets the caps and minimum clearances side by side, with Spain's grant bands.
France's Agri-PV décret is settled law, upheld by the Conseil d'État in March 2026. What decides a French project now is the substation, the department and the tender. In CRE's round 9 in July 2026, 190 farmland dossiers fell: 25 were cut at the 500 MWc farmland limit and 165 more on price. The guide shows what the winning farmland bids averaged, and why the department's farmland commission can refuse what the décret allows.
Raised Agri-PV is the main route onto Italian farmland, and the permit rests on a sworn statement that the plant keeps 80% of gross sellable production. A breach costs €1,000 to €100,000, plus restoring the site. Incentives add four more requirements that pull against each other, so widening the rows for farming brings you close to the electricity floor. Then there's the queue. Terna had 140 GW of solar connection requests at the end of August 2026, and only about 7% was ready to build, reported by pv magazine Italia. Since DL 21/2026, a request alone no longer holds your place.
Germany's 1,200 MW sub-quota for special solar installations never ran in 2026, for lack of EU state-aid approval. The EEG 2027 cabinet draft drops it. Raised Agri-PV keeps its 0.5 ct/kWh bonus, but it bids in the general tenders against ordinary ground-mount. About half the bid volume in the March 2026 round won nothing. The planning shortcut is small too, and stops at 2.5 hectares.
Spain, Poland and the UK have no national Agri-PV definition. In Spain, the autonomous community authorizes projects up to 50 MW, and Catalonia's guidance and IDAE's grant bands do the defining. In Poland, municipalities without the new general plan stopped issuing WZ decisions, the fallback consent, on 1 September 2026. Only about a third had one, reported by arena-energy.pl. In England, solar up to 100 MW goes to the local planning authority. And when NESO cut Great Britain's connection queue, 35.9 GW of solar was left without a firm grid offer.
The guide's screening order runs six checks, and each one can rule a site out before the next one costs money. It starts with the field itself, on the first map look. The local authority comes before the landowner call, and the grid before you sign land. The order holds in all six markets, and the market pages set out the law behind each check.
Agri-PV in Europe: what the rules actually say, market by market covers France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Poland and the UK, with the EU layer above them. Each market page ends with what's changing next, from the EEG 2027 in Germany to Italy's next FER X auctions. Download it for free.
Download here.