Identifying rural areas using entrepreneurship indicators : a case study in Greece

Abstract

The need for a more comprehensive, multidimensional tool for policy formulation and evaluation became evident when the negative repercussions of the EU Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) had to be faced by policy makers in the early 1990s, especially in response to rural depopulation, increasing income inequalities, and environmental degradation problems. Over the last thirty years, agricultural regions in Greece have undergone dramatic structural changes, which in turn have altered their rural identity. Changes in employment composition is an indicator of the transformations taking place in the agricultural sector, and claim for more comprehensive methodologies for rural areas for profiles. The emerging need for developing new methodologies for traditionally rural and rapidly changing regions in Europe, is pertinent to rural policies. This paper comments on the possible use of an original classification criterion based on the entrepreneurial trajectory of rural areas. Aiming at the requirements set by the new EU Rural Development Regulation EC 1698/2005, the existing methodologies are also reviewed, their strengths and weaknesses are presented, and the emerging need for an enhanced tool for rural classification is finally discussed. The classificationtypology is best derived when accounting for variables describing the entrepreneurial activity in rural areas using a flexible and effective response to policy needs (policy targeting and monitoring of rural development).