Europe is at its best when it empowers local actors – a theme that echoed throughout the 2025 European Week of Regions and Cities (13–16 October, Brussels). The Rural Pact Support Office took part in several sessions, exploring how local and regional authorities are driving the green, digital, and demographic transitions. Explore the insights revealing that empowering local communities is essential to building a more cohesive, sustainable, and future-ready Europe.

The new strategy – launched by the European Commission on 21 October – sets out a roadmap to revitalise farming, strengthen rural areas and ensure a new generation of farmers can thrive. It acknowledges that young farmers face specific challenges that need to be addressed with specific actions at all levels of governance – EU, national and regional – and across policies.

Community-led Local Development (CLLD) provides a proven framework for empowering local partnerships, integrating public and private action, and ensuring that development reflects the real needs of people and places. Explore a new brochure outlining key messages from the conference ‘CLLD – prosperous communities: opportunity for a shared future 2028+’ (31 March–1 April 2025).

Gender-sensitive rural development is an investment in the long-term resilience of rural communities – a recent report by the EU-funded project GRANULAR explores the intersection of gender and rurality in shaping employment outcomes across Europe.

How do young people see the future of their villages and mountain communities? That’s the question behind the Erasmus+ ECO project which brought together teenagers from France’s Hautes-Pyrénées and Spain’s Sobrarbe regions to explore what connects them – and what challenges they share.