New Policy Briefing: Empowering communities to take action for the rural vision
- Rural Pact
- Rural Revitalisation Platform
- Stronger Rural Areas
- Prosperous rural areas
- Resilient rural areas
- Connected rural areas
How can the Rural Pact contribute to transformative local action in rural areas? Our new Policy Briefing identifies a set of actions for both local communities and higher-level authorities to pursue in order to enable tailored responses to rural challenges.
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The Briefing explores the key elements of a concerted effort to enable rural communities to take effective action towards the rural vision objectives.
On one hand, each rural community must develop its own initiatives that respond to its specific needs and opportunities, in line with its cultural and legal contexts. Local actors, including civil society and private entities, authorities and other public actors, need to:
- Come together around the local leaders who could drive the transformation of the area;
- Adopt an appropriate organisational set-up that allows broad participation;
- Agree on shared vision and plan, including the identification of needs and opportunities.
On the other hand, a number of initiatives must be taken by higher-level authorities at regional, national and European levels to stimulate and support local transformative action, in particular:
- Recognise the local leaders and their organisational set-ups as partners in genuine multi-level governance;
- Organise and/or finance local capacity building;
- Foster coordinated action of all relevant policies and funding streams;
- Improve access to funding and reduce bureaucracy.
Explore these elements in detail and discover how they are applied in various rural areas across Europe! The Briefing will be translated in all official EU languages in early 2025.
See also the first edition of the Policy Briefing on ‘Making the Rural Pact happen in Member States’ for a number of ingredients at the level of policy design to foster concerted action towards meeting the objectives of the rural vision.