Rural landscape protection forms a new challenge for law. Contemporary it is under high anthropogenic pressure and is the object of dynamic transformation. The aim of this paper is to answer the question: how normative regulation responds to the above mentioned challenges? Do legal instruments, especially at European level, provide effective landscape protection in rural areas? The answer to this questions needs, at the beginning, to determine the legal concept of rural landscape. Then the legal basis of rural landscape protection are presented emphasizing the new notion of protection developed by European Landscape Convention. The importance of multifuncionality of agriculture and landscape concepts in this regard is also discussed. A striking compliance between the need of landscapes protection and the directions of EU Common Agricultural Policy development can be observed so the linkage between them are also analyzed here. Finally the problem of renewable energy resources in context of rural landscape protection is highlighted.
Keywords: Rural Landscape, Legal Protection of Landscape, Rural Areas, Common Agricultural Policy.