EU Policies and Rural Employment

This chapter outlines the diverse picture of employment and incomes in the EU’s rural regions, the general problems they face, and trends in their key variables. Policies to provide employment are a mixture of national-and EU-level interventions, including assistance from the EU’s Structural and Investment Funds to regions that are lagging economically, many of which also happen to be rural. Rural development has traditionally been seen in the EU, not as an aspect of regional policy but rather as part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and funded from the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development. In creating jobs, there has been a focus on the role of primary agriculture and forestry. Arguably, this has been misplaced in that agriculture is, in most rural regions, a minor part of the economy and incapable of correcting general unemployment. Increasingly, the EU is requiring its major Structural and Investment Funds to function together, including in the evaluation of their impact on the problems of rural regions. This is a work in progress, and the success of an integrated approach is by no means assured.