ABSTRACT
The EU rural development policy (RDP), commonly known as the second pillar of the CAP, has been heralded as an integrated policy designed to address the multifunctional development needs and the complex environmental and governance problems of rural areas. This chapter examines the rhetoric and the reality regarding policy integration (PI) within the second pillar of the CAP with the aim to assess its current extent and form and future prospects and to inquire the reasons for the problems identified. More specifically, the examination concerns the coherence and balance of the main instrument of the RDP, namely the Rural Development Regulation (RDR), and the integration of the RDP with other Community policies, in both a theoretical/conceptual and a procedural sense.
