The study of regional disparities on the European scale is often conducted with the NUTS3 or NUTS2 statistical units of the Eurostat statistical office. Such a reading scale is too loose to allow a precise analysis of the qualitative differentiations between rural areas. This paper aims at suggesting a methodological re-positioning (a) on an efficient statistical definition of rural areas, and (b) on the proper scale of the analysis of rural facts, in order to isolate rural areas among global statistical tables and to build qualitative typologies on the current evolutions of the Central European Countryside. The example of Hungary will then be used as a concrete case-study.