Rural revitalization platform

The rural dynamisation platform is aimed at stakeholders working for the development of these areas at national, regional and local level, including local action groups, national rural and CAP networks and stakeholder organizations, who play a key role in exchanging, translating and adapting knowledge available at European level and in other countries, regions and villages to make it useful to local actors.

The European network for rural development put together a thematic group on rural revitalization that worked between December 2021 and June 2022 to:

• identify enablers of rural revitalization;
• build a self-assessment tool to design policies for rural revitalization;
• make recommendations on how to structure the platform.

The platform also builds on the experience of other initiatives such as projects on smart villages (Smartrural21, SmartRural27), European territorial cooperation (INTERREG), Territorial agenda pilots (Small places matter). 

You can find first elements of content of the future platform on this website. The Commission is working to implement the thematic group’s recommendations to develop a collaborative on-line platform providing two-way communication channels and interactive tools to facilitate experience sharing and mutual learning. The rural pact support office to be established in 2023 will contribute with new content to the platform and organise relevant events. 

What are the enablers of rural revitalization?

The thematic group identified five enabling factors that drive the success of rural revitalization policies and grouped them into two building blocks:

1. Building Block 1 (Structures) covers policy design, coordination and integration (focusing on national and regional levels) and includes the following factors:

I. Integrated strategies

II. Multi-level governance

2. Building Block 2 (People) covers local empowerment, capacity building and innovation (focus on national, regional and local levels) and includes the following factors:

III. Local capacities

IV. Territorial cooperation

V. Local innovation

Supporting these enabling factors through policies puts rural stakeholders in greater capacity to address the challenges and opportunities in their context (outer part of wheel) to move from a poor situation to a better one in key areas such as infrastructure, services, social inclusion, environment, basic goods. 

 

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