EU Structural Funds and Regional Development Trajectories

Abstract

The primary agricultural sector must continue to be supported. To this end, the European Union has made the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) available to improve the competitiveness of the agricultural and forestry sectors; the environment and the landscape; the quality of life in rural areas; and to encourage the diversification of the rural economy. However, at the NUTS 2 regional level, well-defined policies are needed to distribute the fund as efficiently as possible and in proportion to their needs. This paper will investigate the extent to which the EAFRD influences the growth of gross value added (GVA) in the agricultural sector of 11 countries in Central and Eastern Europe at the regional level, as well as the impact of other factors. The Central and Eastern European region is characterized by the impact of conflicts, economic crises, and successive processes of accession to the European Union, aspects that underscore the relevance of this article. The method used was a fixed-effects panel analysis. Data were collected from official websites administered by the European Union, such as Eurostat and European Data. The results show that the EAFRD and education have a positive and statistically significant effect, while population is not statistically significant. However, the model may also be explained by other indicators that were not included in the present analysis. UDC: [631.16+336.56:061.1EU]:332.146.2(4-15+4-191.2); JEL: R11, C23, O18, R58