Rural Development Planning in Europe

Rural areas are increasingly present in national and European debates and agendas. Despite the growing importance of EU-funded rural development policies, national rural programmes are very diverse in terms of geography, scale, and objectives. Comparative research can help to understand what shapes policy and local situations by looking at geographical, economic, historical, or political specificities and transformations from a dual and dialectical perspective: “territory” and “policy”. This chapter compares rural policies based on two rubrics: the first is based on policy objectives, which allow us to distinguish three time periods, although with some overlap; the second is based on policy instruments, which show whether they are all used in each country and whether they are used in different ways. All rural areas in the age of ecological transition are confronted with three fundamental trends which are likely to transform them much more rapidly than rural development policies: competition for arable land, production of energy and raw materials, and the search for protected areas. Comparative research highlights the diversity of national and local responses to these challenges and reminds us that there are always alternatives.