How Does the CAP Cope with the Problem of Rural Employment? The Examples of Selected EU Countries

Due to global changes in last decades, the share of agriculture on national GDP and employment has declined. Responding to this trend the importance of wider rural economic development is recently stressed out within the CAP, mainly by the support of non-agricultural activities in rural areas and non-agricultural actors involved in the economic development process. This study deals with the evaluation of rural employment creation strategies of selected member states or regions within them. We did this by analysing the degree of rurality, labour market characteristics and chosen agricultural sector characteristics. We applied the cluster analysis and compared clusters in chosen indicators in within and in between. Our study highlights the fact that specific settings of individual Rural Development Programmes of member states and regions related to rural employment creation correspond to the level of their development and the respective needs of agribusiness and rural areas. In general, within clusters we noticed great heterogenity of indicators used for the explanation of employment creation approach. We conclude that for the full explanation of policy settings of rural employment creation, we need to consider also the influence of unobservable factors, e.g. political lobby