“A European Rural Agenda is urgently needed for rural territories after the COVID crisis”
27 November 2020, from 9.30 am to 1 pm
An event co-organised by the NAT Commission of the European Committee of the Regions and the RUMRA and Smart villages Intergroup, with the support of RED and Euromontana.
The seminar, divided into two parts, is devoted to the lessons to be learnt from the responses of rural territories to the health crisis, and to the recommendations to be developed in a long-term vision for rural territories. Click here to discover a list of solidarity initiatives relayed by R.E.D.
As an introduction, the Vice-President of the Commission, Dubravka Šuica, recalled the willingness of her institution to come up with a concrete vision and action plan for rural territories, in line with the recovery and Green Deal policies. Franc Bogovič , Member of the European Parliament and Co-Chair of the Intergroup “RUMRA and Smart Villages”, said that “Commission Vice-President Šuica, and I are equally convinced that the challenge to reinvigorate and develop rural Europe is a horizontal challenge that needs to be tackled with a coordinated smart strategy from many angles simultaneously. Agriculture, cohesion, connectivity, green energy, mobility, education, services, digital platforms and health care-care are all equally relevant areas in this context that need to be developed in a coordinated effort that I coined with the term Smart Villages“.
The first panel discussion focused on resilient and innovative rural responses to the COVID crisis. Juan Andrès Gutierrez, President of Euromontana and moderator of this discussion, concluded that “Now is time to create at EU level the enabling conditions for vibrant, attractive, and resilient rural and mountainous areas. The Vision must propose concrete and ambitious measures to ensure the vitality and resilience of our regions, with people who live, work and travel there. This is why we want to unleash the (innovative) potential of our regions as shown in the different good practices today and keep living rural and mountainous territories”.
At the invitation of R.E.D., the French Secretary of State Joël Giraud, in charge of Rurality, insisted on the need to formalise the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas within a strategic framework, a European Rural Agenda. Like in France, which adopted a Rural Agenda in September 2019, a European Rural Agenda is an essential tool for the integrated development of rural territories.
The President of R.E.D. and the European Countryside Mouvement, Gérard Peltre, insisted on the fact that “Rural areas are a mosaic of resilient rural territories in which local actors cooperate to meet the challenges of a changing world”.
Clara Aguilera MEP, co-president of the RUMRA & Smart villages intergroup (rural, mountain and remote areas), closed the event by declaring: “We need a horizontal vision when designing the European Rural Agenda, in line with the European Green Deal, enabling citizens that live in rural areas to have good access to basic services and to benefit from equal opportunities with those living in urban areas”.
Gérard Peltre also called on the European Commission to adopt a European Rural Agenda with ambitious and concrete political objectives to reinforce the innovative dynamics of rural territories, to organise intelligent inter-territorial cooperation and to stimulate the mobilisation of citizens in local development strategies.
This event took place a few days before the closure of the consultation set for 30 November 2020, which will provide citizens’ orientations for the next Long Term Vision. We are now looking forward to the analysis of the numerous expected responses, and hope that they will put forward constructive solutions for the integrated development of rural territories, in line with the R.E.D. recommendations.
We will continue our contacts for the implementation of the European Rural Agenda in the follow-up of the Resolution in favour of rural areas voted at the Rural Parliament in October 2018, on our impulse, and of the French Rural Agenda.
Find the Press Release of the NAT Commission of the Committee of the Regions by following this link.
Below are the presentations of the speakers: