1. Iman Boot Gent, 26 August 2008 iman.boot@ec.europa.eu European Policies for Rural Development

2. 2 Rural Development Policy  Political background  Adaptation  Biodiversity / environment / climate change

3. 3 Rural Development Policy  Strategic approach  National / Regional programmes  Axis 1 – competitiveness  Axis 2 – environment and countryside  Axis 3 – quality of life / diversification  Axis 4 – governance / capacity building

4. 4 Does it work?  Political level  Value for money

5. 5 Axis 3 – quality of life and diversification  Why is it important?  Why the link to agriculture?

6. 6 DG AGRI and Modelling  Several datasets and models available for commodity production  Failure to develop modelling tools for rural development

7. 7 What do we want?  Instruments that demonstrate the usefulness or uselessness or instruments  Tools to compare the implementation in different countries and regions  Tools that we can use to communicate the benefits of our policy

8. 8 Thank you for your attention