摘要：For several reasons, rural areas in Poland developed much more slowly than urban areas, and to a large extent, they have been neglected. The situation was much improved after Poland’s accession to the EU, with continuous flow of funds for the development of agriculture. These actions facilitated faster development of such areas, while the structure of the latter has improved. The current instrument for the implementation of the EU policy for rural areas, operating within the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy, is the Rural Development Programme for the years 2007–2013 (RDP 2007–2013). The present document contains a comparative analysis of the Rural Development Programme 2007–2013 as implemented within three states, namely: Poland, Austria, and the Czech Republic. General conditions and limits to the granted financial assistance have been determined in the EU regulations, therefore they can not differ between Poland, the Czech Republic, and Austria. What differs, however, is the projects and investment tasks implemented within particular measures. In the article, the aforementioned countries have been compared in terms of rural areas, and in terms of measures implemented within the Rural Development Programme in each of them. It has been noted that there have been 44 measures implemented within the Rural Development Programme 2007–2013, while only 19 of these are implemented within thematic axis 2 – improving the environment and countryside. Poland is implementing 26 measures in total, the Czech Republic is implementing 32, and Austria – 31. The highest amount of financing per country’s area went to Austria, and the lowest – to the Czech Republic. The Czech Republic possesses the most favourable structure of the rural areas, while Poland possesses the least favourable structure thereof. In the present work, the method of logical and descriptive analysis was employed, based on the Polish and international subject literature.
