Special Study: The Role of CAP Rural Development Programs in Creating Rural Jobs in Poland

Poland accounts for almost a fifth of rural employment in the EU-28. It was also the largest beneficiary of 2007–2013 Rural Development Programs (RDPs) of all Member States (MSs) under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). However, the Polish rural labor market suffers from many deficiencies, which, if not solved, may cause inefficient use of CAP funds or fail to reduce further emigration of the rural labor force abroad. The main goal of this chapter is to evaluate the impact of successive RDPs in Poland on employment, both in agriculture and other sectors of the economy. Both the direct impacts of the 2007–2013 RDP (i.e. effects explicitly related to beneficiary employment) and the indirect impacts caused by beneficiaries spending on goods and services in the economy are investigated. It is concluded that the RDP had an overall weak impact on employment because its measures created contradictory incentives on employment and delivered support through less productive types of subsidies. Although the RDP contributed to increased employment in industry and services, at the same time it hindered the outflow of labor from agriculture. The chapter concludes with some suggestions as to how Polish RDPs could be redesigned in order to achieve more desirable effects.