Rural Europe: A Policy Overview

about these problems. Third, the changing nature and role of the rural economy. The CAP has always had a dominant position amongst resource-using policies of the European Union. It has never taken less than 50 per cent of the EU budget, although as the Union has enlarged and deepened and other policies have been developed, this proportion has steadily shrunk from 76 per cent in the 1960s to 52 per cent in 1996. Whilst the CAP has been the most sig nificant European policy affecting rural areas, it has not been seen as a rural policy. Quite explicitly, and based on the articles which established it in the Treaty of Rome, it was a policy for an economic sector, agriculture, and for those engaged in the particular activity of farming. In the time up to the Second World War, such was the importance of agriculture in its contribution to GDP and as an employer of labour, that a policy for agriculture could indeed be considered a policy for rural areas. In two of the biggest founder members of the EC, France and Italy, there would have been little reaction to the assertion that the CAP