Upcomings – Rural Online Events September and Beyond

Artieda in Zaragoza province, Spain, has made some interesting advancements in rural development in recent years 

Many events have moved online, which has advantage and disadvantages. It can be easier to attend, but then, in rural areas, broadband coverage can be poor. In a way, this conundrum acts as a soft landing into a whole series of interesting consultations, readings, presentations and events, from Ecolise, ENRD, DESIRA and others. 

First up, remember the European Commission is conducting a a public consultation on the long term vision for rural areas. The Vision should “enable rural communities to make the most of their potential and support them in facing up to their own unique set of issues, from demographic change to connectivity, the risk of poverty and limited access to services”.   This runs until 30 November 2020. You can also read the 198 submissions to the earlier roadmap for this process at the link

Here in ARC2020, we’ve done our best to help mobilise and animate rural stakeholders recently too, with events and collaborative documents. Check out the resources at our dedicated page on building this rural vision.  This incudes our working document and our event report, as well as a specific article which focuses on stakeholder feedback

ENRD – the European Network for Rural Development  – has held a number of interesting events recently, again with lots of useful resources. This is especially useful because there is, to date,  a lack of resources on rural, including on rural relations to the EU Green Deal.

The European Green Deal and rural areas is a sub-theme of the broader ENRD thematic work on ‘Greening the Rural Economy‘: According to ENRD: “the dedicated Thematic Group (TG) will operate from September 2020 until July 2021 as a stakeholder driven platform to exchange on the role of the European Green Deal (EGD). The TG will build on practical lessons from delivering the current RDPs, as well as on past thematic work on rural climate action and bioeconomy, and will collect and provide useful indications and ideas for the programming of green interventions under the future CAP Strategic Plans.

ENRD has an event on the EU Green Deal and rural Europe coming up on 28th September. While this event is booked out, presentations and background documents will be made available at the event page.  

ENRD and the Long Term Vision for Rural Areas to 2040. The first of four meetings of the ENRD Thematic Group (TG) was held on 22nd and 23rd September. This meeting was to make a contribution to developing the European Commission’s ‘Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas’ consultation. Again, lots of useful information at the event page link, on building the vision and on engaging stakeholders.

Greening the Rural Economy  (overarching, 2014-2020)

The European Green Deal and Rural Areas 

ENRD on CAP and the EU Green Deal (June 2020)

DESIRA – a Horizon2020 project on digitalisation in rural areas had a its first meeting of the Rural Ditigalisation Forum recently, and has a number of really useful resources at the event page here. This includes information on the state of rural digitalisation, socio-economic sustainability indicators and other project specific aspects too.

In the coming days weeks and months, we will endeavour to pull together many related strands to help add to the momentum for a better rural Europe. 

As part of the European Week of Regions and Cities, this workshop gives the floor to young people in order to hear their vision for rural areas and discuss the new opportunities that digitalisation brings for rural territories. Register by September 27.

Ecolise – finally, check out the series of webinars from Ecolise on sustainable communities, which culminates in an event on 29th September (Tuesday) in Brussels, with the EESC

A Vision for Rural Europe – Civil Society asks Questions

A Vision for Rural Europe – Event Report

Working Document on “A Vision and Strategy for Rural Europe – Now.”