ABSTRACT
Rural Development is a new policy area for the European Community (Ray MacSharry, Member of the Commission of the European
Communities Responsible for Agriculture and Rural Development(1990a))
THE BACKGROUND
There are four features of the development of rural areas, in the European Communities (EC) as well as in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries since the 1950s which deserve attention in order to understand the background to the issues involved in the current debates on rural development.
