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Date: 02/06/05
- Much of the current thinking on rural development, particularly within the European Commission, can be traced back to a declaration issued at a 1996 EU-sponsored conference in Cork, Ireland.
- It stated that sustainable rural development must "become the fundamental principle" which underpins all EU policy with an impact on the countryside. Its aims should be reducing migration away from rural communities, tackling poverty, creating jobs and improving health and safety on farms.
- The need to protect the environment was also recognised as essential.
- In 2003, Franz Fischler, then European commissioner for agriculture, proposed the most radical reform of the Common Agricultural Policy in more than four decades. It suggested that the money saved from cutting direct payments to farmers should be redirected towards schemes that protect the environment or develop the economies of rural areas.
- Some of the newer member states of the Union have had rural development policies for more than ten years. In 1994, Poland, where the farm sector employs around 20% of the working population, listed rural development as one of the ten key objectives in its national development plan. Among the policy goals were the promotion of non-agricultural activities in villages, the modernisation of agriculture, providing telecommunications to rural areas and supporting co-operatives and markets.
- A temporary rural development instrument (TRDI) has been introduced for the ten, mostly ex-communist, states that joined the EU last year. The 2004-06 scheme is designed to help semi-subsistence farms restructure and to boost compliance with EU environment and food safety standards.
- In July 2004, Franz Fischler recommended that €13.7 billion a year should be spent on rural development in 2007-13. He advocated setting up the European Agriculture Rural Development Fund for that purpose.
- A European Commission study published in March cited major benefits from environmental protection measures undertaken in some EU member states. For example, it applauded measures to improve water quality by reducing the use of fertilisers and pesticides. In Austria, such measures have contributed to raising the level of its internal waters with almost no toxic contamination from 81% to 87% in 1998-2001.
Facts about rural development policy under the EU's Common Agricultural Policy
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