Synthesis Report - European Commission - Europa

Ex-post Evaluation of the ERDF 2000-2006
Synthesis Report
territorial balance and the depopulation of many of the more sparsely populated parts of the EU
mean that there has been increasing interest in the fortunes of rural areas and the problems they
face.
These areas, and the role of the ERDF in assisting their development, were included in the
evaluation as a specific issue for investigation.
3.8.2 What are rural areas?
The first problem encountered when examining these issues is to identify rural areas. As
indicated in Chapter 1, there is a widely accepted OECD definition of rural areas for research
purposes, which relates to small areas, or local units, with a low population density (specifically
below 150 per square km). Since, however, there are little if any data for areas this small, rural
areas tend to be defined, as here, at the NUTS 3 regional level, the smallest areas for which there
are at least some data for all EU Member States.
Accordingly, there may be rural local units even in NUTS 3 regions defined as being
predominantly urban and even more so in intermediate regions. Indeed, as the evaluation
revealed, the OECD definition does not necessarily correspond with what administrative
authorities across the EU regard as being rural areas, which are often defined, if not very
precisely, on a smaller scale than NUTS 3 35 . Policy towards rural areas at national or regional
level, therefore, may target slightly different regions than those defined as rural in the evaluation
– or, indeed, by researchers generally. Nevertheless, these areas are usually small and most rural
areas as commonly understood would tend to be in, or coincide with, NUTS 3 regions defined as
being rural. Focusing on these regions, therefore, ought to give a reasonable indication of both
the funding going to rural areas over the programming period and the types of project it helped
to finance.
3.8.3 What were the policy objectives in rural area?
As the evaluation also revealed, there is no neat and simple economic theory which prescribes
what development strategy should be adopted in rural areas as opposed to other types. Indeed,
economic theories for the most part do not distinguish between types of region in this sense. At
the same time, there is increasing emphasis on the need for policy to be tailored to the specific
features of a region, to make the most of its endowment of resources or assets, widely defined,
and to develop its areas of potential comparative advantage accordingly. Equally, the growing
concern with on sustainability implies that the development path pursued should not give rise to
significant damage to the environment or the region’s natural assets.
In practice, policy towards rural areas differed across the EU, though there was a common aim of
trying to maintain population in the areas concerned and, therefore, economic activity. In some
countries, however, such as Germany or Spain, this was regarded to a large extent as being
coincident with supporting agriculture. In others, such as Sweden or France, a broader
perspective was taken, though in neither country was there a specific focus on rural areas as
such. Instead the concern was with the development of regions which happened to be rural. The
difference mirrors that between the EAGGF, which was predominantly directed towards assisting
the agricultural sector and closely related activities, and the ERDF, which was more focused on
the development of the region as such, as indicated below.
35 These can be relatively large and populous regions – the whole ‘Communidad’ of Madrid, for example, is a single
NUTS 3 region with a population of around 5.8 million.
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