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The integration of water into agricultural and rural development policies illustrates the difficulty to achieve fully synergistic policy interventions. Under the current Common Agricultural Policy (2014-2020), the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development recognised efficient water use a key strategic objective for European agriculture, and Member States could actively support investments to tackle water stress issues on agriculture through their Rural Development Plans. Most RDPs planning measures on agriculture water use did so by supporting investments in irrigation water use efficiency in agriculture. However, few had set out ambitious water saving targets and encourage uptake of more drought-resistant crops. Instead, RDPs tended to support investments in irrigated areas, as a way to reduce the vulnerability of agriculture to water stress, while attaching few safeguards to prevent increasing abstraction pressure on scarce resources (see Box 6.1).