Land Concentration and the Just Transition for Smallholders in Six CEE Countries (2005–2023)

The transition toward environmentally sustainable agriculture within the European Union has intensified concerns regarding the distributive consequences of structural change, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where post-socialist land reforms have produced highly heterogeneous agrarian structures. This study examines land concentration and agrarian restructuring through the lens of distributive justice within a just transition framework in six CEE member states—Bulgaria, Czechia, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, and Romania—using Eurostat Farm Structure Survey and Integrated Farm Statistics data for the period 2005–2023. A multidimensional indicator framework combining the Gini coefficient, Theil entropy index, concentration ratios, the land-adapted Palma ratio, the Dualism Index, and the Structural Change Index is employed to assess structural change and inequality. By 2023, land concentration ranged from a Gini coefficient of 0.87 in Bulgaria and a share of 72% of utilized agricultural area held by farms above 250 ha in Czechia to a Gini of 0.64 and a corresponding share of 12% in Poland, while Lithuania recorded the steepest increase in concentration over the period (Δ Gini +0.15, 2005–2023). Smallholder land shares (farms < 5 ha) collapsed in parallel, falling from 13.1% to 1.9% in Bulgaria and to near-total disappearance in Czechia (below 0.4%). These persistent cross-country differentials, despite two decades of harmonized CAP exposure, suggest that post-socialist institutional legacies continue to shape restructuring outcomes and that area-based payments may reinforce existing structural asymmetries rather than offset them. By integrating multiple concentration indicators within a comparative just transition perspective, the study provides a broader understanding of how land concentration may influence the distributive dimension of agricultural sustainability in post-socialist Europe.