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Abstract
Member States acknowledge the multifunctional role of the primary sector; however each of them emphasises specific functions according to its own model of agriculture and rural development. As a result, the CAP and the demand of citizens addressing a new role of the primary sector in post-industrial society have contributed to develop a specialisation of multifunctionality at the EU level that is more and more visible moving from an aggregated territorial level (Member Stares) toward a local one (regions). The objective of this paper is to analyse the specialization towards the secondary functions of agriculture at two different territorial and institutional levels : the national level (EU-25) and the regional level (in Italy), with the support of a double-step multivariate analysis (principal component analysis and cluster analysis). The analysis shows that, downscaling the territorial level, a more detailed specialisation towards the secondary functions of agriculture emerges. This is due to the crucial role of the interactions of the agricultural activity with the social and environmental context but also to the CAP that is more and more decentralised at the territorial level.