Rural development in the European Union has to face several challenges such as increasing international competition among agricultural markets; growing needs for rural services (multifunctional agriculture); Eastern enlargement: increase in number and area of distressed regions and growing...

This paper looks at the Cohesion Policy of the European Union (EU) and investigates how the EU agricultural and rural development policies shape its influence on regional growth. The analysis of the drivers of regional growth shows that the EU Regional Policy has a positive and significant...

The overall objective of the present study is to contribute to the knowledge-base that is urgently required for the implementation of sustainable rural development activities in Haiti. The study concentrated on the following two objectives: update knowledge and produce a series of maps of...

This paper discusses the challenges that the next EU programming period has given to rural policy. In the case of Finland the most important level of implementing regional and rural policies so far has been provinces (NUTS 3) but in 2007-2013 both the EU Commission and our national rural policy...

What is the new rural paradigm? Its main characteristics are a focus on places rather than sectors and an emphasis on investments rather than subsidies. In an era of reduced agricultural employment, this report highlights the important and diverse challenges facing rural areas, their unused...

This book examines the major rural developments and the issues that policy makers have been dealing with across the OECD over the last two decades. The OECD Conference, held in Siena, Italy, in July 2002, on the Future of Rural Policy, identified the need for rural policies to look beyond...