The study investigates the convergence of labour productivity in 204 NUTS2 regions of the EU-15 between 1995 and 2006. The main objective of our work was to assess whether and to what extent European Union (EU) policies (Regional Policy and Common Agricultural Policy) have been effective in...

The four main ways in which rural employment creation can be grounded on the exploitation of natural capital can be structured by two complementary analytical directions. These are firstly, ‘production’ based on (a) renewable resources (agriculture, energy) and (b) depletive...

This paper examines if broadband Internet access (‘broadband’) developments enhance regional cohesion in ten New Member States (NMS-10) of the European Union. It focuses on broadband developments in these countries financed from Structural Funds (SF). The importance of their impacts...

The starting point of the EDORA project was the recognition that, rather than becoming more uniform in character, rural Europe is, in many ways, becoming increasingly diverse, implying new challenges and opportunities. The project’s overarching aim was to examine the process of...

This paper focuses on current trends of regionalisation with supra-regional coalitions emerging in Europe. In the context of further European integration and institutionalisation of cross-border cooperation, functional integration in cross-border areas is developing. By exploiting cross-border...

Definitions are imposed but properties not. The basic question addressed by this paper is how to ‘detect’ objective socio-economic spatial structures instead of ‘defining’ them arbitrarily. The NUTS classification model is rather arbitrary. Not only have the...

Sustainable rural development is one of the social, economic and territorial cohesion aspects of the European Union. In the current financial perspective 2007-2013 rural areas development is supported by the Common Agricultural Policy, which does not always contribute to improvement of their...

The concept of sustainable development is currently one of the most important concepts in the world. The implementation of the global idea is in the hands of local communities. The success of LA21 initiatives largely depends on two important factors: the bottom-up initiatives of the community...

There is a continuously growing literature on the agricultural transformation in Central and Eastern European countries (see some surveys in Brooks and Nash 2002; Rozelle and Swinnen 2004). The research has focused on various aspects of transition, including land reform, farm restructuring, price...

This paper takes a new empirical look at the long-standing question of the effect of exchange rate volatility on international trade flows of transition economies in Central Europe by studying the case of Hungarian agricultural exports to their export destination countries between 1999 and 2008....