LAND CONSOLIDATION AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE

Summary There is growing inequality between rural and urban areas in Central and Eastern Europe. This situation occurs for many reasons and efforts to enhance the quality of rural life must include improvements to agricultural production, employment, infrastructure, environment and housing. The success of projects to improve rural areas will depend to a large extent on how they address the great number of small and fragmented farms. This paper focuses on the importance of including land consolidation as an instrument of rural development in transition countries. It suggests that while the land consolidation experiences of western Europe are valuable, transition countries will have to devise solutions for their own particular land fragmentation patterns in accordance with the costs they can budget for and the resources they can mobilise