Importance of rural areas and the regional profiles of EU member states

• Author: Polgar (Deszke) K.D., Duguleana L.
• Pages: 415-424

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series V: Economic Sciences • Vol. 8 (57) No. 2 - 2015

Importance of rural areas and the regional profiles

of EU member states

Klára - Dalma POLGÁR (DESZKE)1, Liliana DUGULEANĂ2

Abstract: The paper presents in an original manner the theme of EU “importance of rural

areas”, based on the two context-related baseline indicators presented in the Rural

Development Report 2013, for EU Member States, at year 2010. After presenting the

importance of classification the territorial units for regional statistics in EU, and the urban-

rural typology of regions, the study describes the “importance of rural areas” for the

Romanian regional profile. Using cluster classifying method, in SPSS there were identified

two clusters of EU countries which define two types of regional profiles. By applying the

multivariate factorial method of Principal Components Analysis, in SPSS, the regional

profiles of EU Member States were defined, in the context of ”Importance of rural areas”.

Key-words: rural development, regional typology, Principal Components Analysis, Clusters

1. Introduction

The Rural Development in the EU 2013 contains a chapter about “Statistical

description of rural areas”. This chapter is structured according to the following

thematic items: importance of rural areas, socio-economic situation of rural areas,

sectoral economic indicators, environment, diversification and quality of life in rural

areas and LEADER program implementation. (http://ec.europa.eu/

agriculture/statistics/rural-development/2013/index_en.htm)

The indicators of the Report 2013 cover the objective- and context-related

baseline indicators which have been already defined in the Common Monitoring and

Evaluation Framework (CMEF) for the Rural Development Policy over the period

2007-2013. (http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/statistics/rural-

development/2013/indicators_en.pdf)

This study referrs only to the first theme Importance of rural areas, which in

the Report covers two context-related baseline indicators: context 1 - Designation of

rural areas, and context 2 - Importance of rural areas. The Designation of rural

1 Doctoral student, TRANSILVANIA University of Braşov, Association „ALUTUS REGIO

EGYESÜLET” - Covasna, polgarklaradalma@yahoo.com

2 Transilvania University of Braşov, ldugul@unitbv.ro