Land for your bucks: European rents compared

For years, the EU didn’t know too well what to make of information it received about the state of agriculture in its member states. Methodologies used were inconsistent, and there were frequent gaps.

As we covered last week, Eurostat, the EU’s statistical unit, sought to remedy this problem when it became clear that the paucity of insights it could gather on cross-continent comparisons made if difficult to revamp agricultural policy, and in particular its subsidy regime. The result shows vast discrepancies between the price of land across member states.

We can find similar patterns in rents. Eastern European rents have experienced major jumps in the space of four years – and in some cases they were spectacular (in Poland they more than doubled, for instance). In Southern Europe rents decreased, with particularly pronounced deflation in Greece. And in Western Europe rents were largely on the up, with marked inflation in the Netherlands and a less dramatic increase in France.