The efficiency and targeting of measures of the EU rural development policy, the second pillar of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), has come to the front along the entry of Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC) into the EU. The paper, without giving an answer but highlighting the difficulties, deals with the question of targeting in the case of a Hungarian national park. On the basis of literature, the territory of the Hortobágy National Park is examined: first as a nature reservation area, in the second step from institutional breakdown, and finally along development policies. The results show that the bottom-up approach, through “bioregionalism”, could be an answer to the problem.

Keywords: rural development, territorial targeting, environmental protected area