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The Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) ([3]) 2014-2020 are very relevant for water management, as they define largely how agriculture pressures will be addressed in the WFD RBMPs to be available by the end of 2015. In addition, the RDPs represent 20% of the CAP budget. However, integration of the two fields remains difficult in practice.

The draft RDPs were screened with regard to their efforts to contribute to achieve the ecological functioning of water bodies and taking into account the flood protection requirements. In addition it was checked how they align with the WFD implementation and contribute to the restoration of water bodies (Fresh Thoughts Consulting 2014). In many of the RDPs there’s an emphasis on hard defences like dikes and reservoirs, rather than giving priority to natural water retention measures. Explicit references to maintain and not degrade are scarce and so are the links to the floods directive (Fresh Thoughts Consulting 2014). Although there is improvement in the adopted RDPs compared to the draft versions it – in general – remains a missed opportunity to strengthen the links between CAP and water policies.

[3] 56 out of 118 Rural Development Programmes are adopted, covering 63,2% of the EU rural Development Funds (Status as of 3/07/2015), http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/rural-development-2014-2020/country-files/common/overview-map-adopted-rdp_en.pdf  (status to be updated in final version of report)