Prospects for rural areas in an enlarged Europe

E3S Web of Conferences, 2014

The critical waste of the primary resource soil in Europe, is mainly due to the current paradigm of population and activities settlement, strongly dominated since XIX century by a "metropolisation" process: the city is the place where the majority of people want to live, where migrant's flows are directed to, where each new inhabitant would like to find a home, a job, a better life than they had in their place of origin. The cities today house 50% of the world population and use 75% of the resources of the whole planet: and these percentages are continuously growing. Over 70% of Europe's population is now living in urban areas, and these in turn have grown by almost 80% over the last fifty years. 1 Rural areas include not only agricultural areas but areas covered by forests, parks, lawns, protected natural zones as well.

2017

Resolution 422 (2017) .............................................................................................................................2 Recommendation 406 (2017) ..................................................................................................................4 Explanatory memorandum ......................................................................................................................6

Land Degradation & Development, 1990

Based on the findings from the research project: ‘Alternative Uses for Land and the New Farmworker—Segregation versus Integration’, this paper analyses broad lines of development and available options for rural areas in the European Community. Taking into account various limitations on agricultural, forestry, and nature conservation activities, the emergence of three agro-structural regional types is likely to occur: —rural areas with intensive agriculture;—rural areas constituting mainly agrarian-touristic peripheries, which exploit their endogenous development potentials on the basis of quasi-tourism—less-favoured areas with a tendency towards depopulation, which may serve as ecological balance areas.—rural areas with intensive agriculture;—rural areas constituting mainly agrarian-touristic peripheries, which exploit their endogenous development potentials on the basis of quasi-tourism—less-favoured areas with a tendency towards depopulation, which may serve as ecological balance areas.

2014

Regional processes have transformed rural and peripheral areas throughout Europe through spatial, functional and social changes and in terms of stagnating economies as well as population decline. In response to this, the so-­‐called 'new rural paradigm' was developed where key elements are a focus on places rather than sectors and on investments rather than subsidies, stressing the need for building on local strengths and qualities. An overall goal within the EU is to pursue economic, social and territorial cohesion and although Danish policies aim for balanced regional growth and development various reforms seem to pull in a different direction. More specifically, a range of reforms has been consolidating functions and institutions and thereby centralizing growth and development. This article discusses challenges, futures and possibilities on rural and peripheral areas in Denmark and identifies a potential mismatch between different policies, reforms and strategies in relat...

2021

Resumen: El artículo comienza con un debate sobre el concepto de “contracción” y sus orígenes, fuera del ámbito del desarrollo rural. A partir de ahí, se muestra la distribución de las zonas rurales en contracción en toda Europa. A continuación, se describen los procesos socioeconómicos que impulsan el declive demográfico en las zonas rurales, utilizando tanto la revisión bibliográfica del proyecto ESCAPE como los resultados de sus ocho estudios de caso. Seguidamente, se describe de forma breve la evolución de las intervenciones de la UE para paliar los efectos del declive demográfico, y se hacen algunas observaciones sobre el panorama político/de gobernanza actual. Concluimos considerando cómo una mejor comprensión del problema y del proceso de reducción puede conducir a intervenciones más eficaces, en el contexto de una visión renovada a largo plazo para el medio rural europeo. Este último debe reconocer plenamente el creciente abanico de oportunidades a las que se enfrentan las z...

2012

Rural areas cover most of the European Union and are inhabited by nearly half of its population. They provide living space and a means of livelihood for millions of people, is the source of much of the food, provide a number of basic raw materials for the industry as well as they represent a category of recreation space, attractive to visitors. The specific character of rural areas within the European Union is determined by their social and cultural identity. Each of the rural areas has a unique geographical location, natural resources, history, ethnic structure of the population, religion and traditions, urban network, and economic potential. They are characterized by a distinctive way of life, closer relationships between people, direct contact with nature, which is a symbol of healthy living environment. Understanding their nature goes beyond the narrow framework of agriculture and includes contemporary views on multifunctional agriculture, economic diversification of the farm fo...

2007

2004

2004

The following country experts acted as lead experts for specific chapters. They supported the Advisory Body in preparing the questionnaires, which were the basis for the information gathered by the country experts, and the drafts of the following chapters: Edward Majewski: Situation and developments of farm economic performance and its effects on rural areas (chapter 3) Graham Dalton: Rural economies and their developments; in particular, labour market trends and off-farm economic development (chapter 4) Sophia Davidova: Rural infrastructure and services (chapter 5) Stephan Bojnec Developments in the agri-food sector with special emphasis on quality and sanitary issues and resulting effects on rural areas (chapter 6) Matthew Gorton: Agri-environmental policies and the impact of agriculture and agricultural policy on the rural environment (chapter 7) Martin Banse: Policy instruments (chapter 8) Plamen Mishev: Typology of rural areas (chapter 9) The following country experts contributed to this report:

This paper is based on and developed from the EDORA project (European Development Opportunities for Rural Areas), part of the ESPON 2013 Programme, where a new delimitation of the European regions, based on economic and structural variables, were constructed. 1 Two regional typologies play a central role in the analysis: The first is a typology of demographic change based on the demographic equation and developed in the context of both the ESPON Programme, and DG Agriculture's SERA (Study on Employment in Rural Areas) project. The second is a structural typology and focused on economic transformation and restructuring, a typology that was developed in the EDORA project. These two typologies will be used as a framework to explore patterns of demographic and economic change within urban and rural areas at different stages in the process of transformation, from more or less pure agrarian economies to the new rural economy or the "new rurality", with its orientation towards market service activities, where the location to urban areas is of great importance. Four types of rural regions are founded and analyzed from a demographic and structural point of view. The distribution of the demographic types allows the roles of natural population increase, migration and total population change in different kinds of rural areas to be distinguished.