The interest in rural tourism in Poland and Romania is the result of processes originating from economic and social factors reflecting the needs of both rural inhabitants and tourists. A significant growth in the field of rural tourism leads to implementation of innovative products in the development of tourist services. The aim of the study presented in this paper is to show the essence of innovation as a component of the contemporary tourist industry, and to present the type of innovations that occur in rural tourism in Poland and in Romania. The theoretical part analyses innovation in the field of rural tourism. The empirical part, in turn, presents case studies of tourist businesses in rural areas, taking into account the implemented innovations, in both Poland and Romania. The case studies are presented based on interviews with owners of tourist facilities.

Background: The implementation of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union aims at a balanced territorial development and economic convergence of the rural areas. However, in some cases, EU rural funding didn't manage to reduce the gaps between regions, but quite the contrary, the wealthiest regions attracted most of the resources. Purpose: The main objective of the paper was to assess whether EAFRD funding reached the most vulnerable areas. This is a measure of the contribution of CAP to economic convergence. Study design/methodology/approach: Cluster analysis was performed on Galaţi County in Romania. The analysis was performed at LAU level, considering four variables: population, poverty, agricultural area and the value of implemented EAFRD projects. Findings/conclusions: The analysis concluded five clusters, with poorer areas receiving less funding, calling for better development strategies, focused on the central, northern and northeastern parts of the county, where these areas are concentrated. Also, territorial reorganization of rural areas may be necessary in some cases, in order to address the uneven development and poverty. Limitations/future research: The present research focused only on EAFRD funding related to agricultural exploitations. For more precise conclusions and recommendations, further research will also need to include other EAFRD submeasures.

The paper identifies the types of agrarian structure of the European Union member states, based on the fuzzy classification method. The research is based on the Eurostat data regarding the number of agricultural holdings by areal groups and the utilised agricultural area they represent in different countries. Poland and Romania belong to the EU countries with the smallest average size of utilised agricultural area (UAA) per farm, and, as a consequence, semi-subsistence holdings have a dominant position (Popescu and Condei, 2015; Timofti et al., 2015) in both countries. The following areal groups were taken into account in the analysis below: up to 2 ha of UAA, 2-5 ha, 5-10 ha, 10-20 ha, 20-50 ha, 50 ha and more. The use of fuzzy classification allowed identifying groups of countries with similar distribution of the number of holdings in different areal groups, as well as the area they represent. As a result, four types of agrarian structure of the EU countries were identified.

As for all EU member states, EAFRD is an important part of the CAP implementation in Romania. By a comparative study, the present paper analyses some aspects of EAFRD projects, implemented in Romania during 2007-2013 and 2014-2020 programming periods. The analysis was focused on projects addressed to farming and food processing activities, using relevant AFIR reported data. Investments for agricultural holdings recorded better results during the second period, compared to the first one: a much lower cancelling rate and a higher total value of the projects. However, the increased average value showed a preference for larger farms. More financing opportunities and better consultancy services should be made available to medium farms. While also presenting a positive improvement, of a significantly decreased cancelling rate, investments for food processing activities also showed a much lower total value. This should be a cause for concern, as insufficient food processing facilities represents one of the main problems of the Romanian agri-food sector. Investments in mentioned sector must be promoted and made a priority in the upcoming 2021-2027 programming period.

Rural development is an important part of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) of the European Union, as the Second Pillar of CAP, covering a wide range of actions, aimed at achieving a balanced territorial development of rural economies and communities. Previous studies highlighted significant similarities between Romania and Poland, regarding agricultural sector and rural areas. A k-mean cluster analysis was performed on Romanian and Polish NUTS2 regions, in order to identify common problems and examples of good practices. The analysis considered five clusters, built over a dataset of four variables: EAFRD investments in farms per capita, share of agricultural output in GDP, utilized agricultural area, and GDP per capita. Out of the five clusters, only one presented a balanced composition of Romanian and Polish regions, also representing a good example of attracting rural development funds where they're mostly needed.