ENRD Newsletter June 2021

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Modernisation of the ‘Farma Bezdínek s.r.o’ agricultural holding

The largest hi-tech hydroponic greenhouse for growing vegetables in the Czech Republic used Rural Development Programme funds to help upgrade its pesticide-free production capacity. Discover more about this project here.

The European Commission has put forward a long-term Vision for the EU’s rural areas, identifying the challenges and concerns that they are facing, as well as highlighting some of the most promising opportunities that are available to these regions.

Based on a foresight exercise undertaken in an ENRD Thematic Group and wide consultations with citizens as well as other actors in rural areas, the Vision proposes a Rural Pact and an EU Rural Action Plan, which aim to make rural Europe stronger, connected, resilient and prosperous. The EU Rural Action Plan sets out a series of flagship initiatives around these four themes. In addition, “rural proofing” will be put in place whereby major EU policies are reviewed through a rural perspective. A rural observatory will also be set up within the Commission to further improve data collection and analysis on rural areas and inform policy-making.

Discover more from the European Commission press release and the ENRD website’s Long Term Rural Vision Portal.

The provisional political agreement reached on 25 June by the European Parliament and Council on the new Common Agricultural Policy, and since endorsed by EU Agriculture Ministers at their meeting on 28 June, introduces a fairer, greener, more animal friendly and flexible CAP.

Higher environmental and climate ambitions, aligned with Green Deal objectives, are to be implemented from January 2023. The new CAP will also ensure a fairer distribution of CAP support, especially to small and medium-sized family farms and young farmers.

Based on simpler rules set up at EU level, each Member State will prepare a strategic plan to implement the policy over the next five years. This will allow them to take local conditions into account and to focus on performance. Member States will have until the 31 December 2021 to submit their draft plans for approval by the Commission during 2022, and the new plans should enter into force from beginning of 2023.

The ‘Rural Voices’ report provides a qualitative analysis of the findings from stakeholder workshops contributing to the long-term vision for rural areas.

This ENRD report records the hopes and concerns of more than 3000 rural citizens from 19 different EU countries who participated in a series of workshops aimed at encouraging rural citizens to reflect on the situation of their own rural area and how it might change over the next 20 years, what developments they would like to see and the conditions and policies needed to reach their future vision. The discussions were organised with the support of a Workshop Package ‘Welcome to our rural’ prepared by the European Commission together with the ENRD, to promote stakeholder involvement in the future Vision.

National Rural Networks played a pivotal role in helping people from across rural Europe to share their ideas, hopes and vision for the future that are captured in the report. Its content reflects the diversity of European rural areas and include a range of thematic messages, some common strands and suggestions for change identified, as well as many quotes from the rural voices who helped to contribute to its findings.

The latest EU Rural Review looks at the Rural Social Economy while the latest EAFRD Projects Brochures bring the finalists of the Rural Inspiration Awards (RIA) back in the spotlight. The spring and summer editions of the Rural Connections magazine bring you news and views from Europe's rural development world.

Stay tuned for the upcoming EU Rural Review on the Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas and the language versions of Rural Connections. All our next publications will be dispatched through the ENRD website and promoted via social media.

EU greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture fell by more than 20% since 1990 but have stagnated since 2010. As agricultural production has continued to grow, the climate footprint per unit of output continued to improve.

The CAP has helped to reduce GHG emissions. Mitigation is mainly achieved by protecting existing carbon stocks, notably thanks to the maintenance of permanent grasslands supported by extensive livestock grazing systems. Climate adaptation is mainly achieved through supporting a diversity of crops and farming systems, investment support for adaptation to new climate conditions, limiting soil erosion and improving resilience to floods. These are among the main findings of the evaluation study, published by the European Commission on 1 June.

The European Commission published facts and figures about the EU’s 2021-2027 long-term budget and NextGenerationEU.

In 2020 the EU provided an unprecedented response to the coronavirus crisis that hit Europe and the world. At its heart is a stimulus package worth EUR 2.018 trillion in current prices, which consists of the EU’s long-term budget for 2021 to 2027 topped up by the NextGenerationEU funding instrument.

The aim of this evaluation has been to explore the impact of the CAP on its general objective of ensuring viable food production, with a focus on farm income, price stability and the competitiveness of the agricultural sector.

The measures under analysis are set out in four main regulations of December 2013, governing the CAP for the period 2014-2020. The geographical scope of the analysis was the EU28.

The European Parliament’s Agriculture Committee stated that the use of cages in animal farming could be phased out by 2027, after an impact assessment and a properly funded transition.

In their response to the European Citizens’ Initiative ‘End the Cage Age’, MEPs called on the European Commission to come up with a draft EU law on fair and sustainable farming and to propose a revision of existing EU rules on the protection of animals kept for farming purposes. EP adopted its resolution on 10 June (TA(2021)0295). For more info, read also the press release here.

A report by the European Commission's Joint Research Centre aims to describe the territorial diversities of ageing across the EU and explores the main drivers behind such differences with data on access to services and amenities, regional economic performance, political attitudes and behaviours.

This study is innovative because it explores changes in age structure at various geographical levels through time, from highly detailed data at grid level to municipalities and regions (NUTS3).

The Atlas of Demography is a new interactive knowledge management tool developed by the European Commission that enables policy-makers and citizens to observe, monitor and anticipate demographic challenges.

The Atlas is a 'living' tool that will evolve in response to new policy needs and will eventually extend beyond the scope of the EU. It aims to inform several policy areas – including health, labour, education, access to services and amenities, territorial and cohesion policies – with timely, robust, comparable demographic data and knowledge at the finest level of geographical detail (down to the level of a single municipality).

A synthesis report from the United Nations Environment Programme titled 'Making Peace With Nature’: a scientific blueprint to tackle the climate, biodiversity and pollution emergencies is based on evidence from global environmental assessments.

The report translates the current state of scientific knowledge into crisp, clear and digestible facts-based messages that the world can relate to and follow up on. By synthesising the latest scientific findings from the global environmental assessments, the report explores the current status of the world’s most urgent challenges and the opportunities for solving them.

ENRD newsletters have helped to keep you informed with the latest news, events and publications related to EU rural developments since 2014 and in bringing you examples of good practices from every Member State. As our team concludes this contract, we bid our many friends and colleagues au revoir and thank you for your contributions. We encourage you to look forward to the next phase of networking under the CAP with its continuation of knowledge sharing and capacity building in support of rural Europe’s sustainable future. The ENRD Newsletter is now taking a well-deserved summer break but we will be back in the autumn.

The ENRD Contact Point organised an online workshop to discuss certain operational aspects of designing a CAP Strategic Plan (CSP). The meeting was part of the series of ENRD events supporting preparations for the CSPs, and was primarily addressed to future CSP Managing Authorities, Paying Agencies and other relevant national experts involved in CSP design. Outcomes have helped to clarify the practical arrangements concerning design of investment and coupled income support interventions as well as certain financial aspects of the future CSP.

A series of three webinars were organised in June by the European Commission for the Member States’ representatives with responsibilities and/or involvement related to the AKIS Plan, the future CAP network, farm advisory organisations and the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. The purpose of the webinars was to provide guidance for the innovation strand of the future CAP networks on supporting the new CAP cross-cutting innovation objective of modernising agriculture and rural areas. The final report, presentations and videos from the webinars will be published soon here.

The fifteenth meeting of the European Rural Networks’ Steering Group exchanged information on the CAP Reform and on the preparation of the Long Term Vision for Rural Areas. The meeting also updated participants on planned and forthcoming rural networks’ activities, including an exchange on future CAP networking needs.

This virtual NRN meeting covered recent activities associated with the consultation process on the Long Term Vision for Rural Areas, reflecting on NRNs’ contributions to Rural Vision Week, and their roles in supporting communication and stakeholder involvement around the Vision. It included a session on the Conference on the Future of Europe and how NRNs and rural stakeholders can get involved. The meeting also provided an opportunity to reflect on specific activities that have proved useful in previous NRN meetings and the kind of activities that can add value to future networking.

This ENRD workshop explored LEADER’s positive, long-term impacts in rural areas and discussed how its added-value can be maximised in the future through better partnerships, local development strategies, and local projects and initiatives supported by the CAP Strategic Plans.

As part of the European Social Economy Summit - Mannheim 2021, the European Commission and the ENRD recently co-organised a workshop on the social economy in rural areas. Rural areas face a number of challenges, in particular for ensuring access to services. The session explored how far rural social enterprises and social innovation can help overcome the shortage of public investments and public service delivery in rural areas.

This Good Practice Workshop from the Evaluation Helpdesk reflected on experiences of the design and implementation of evaluation plans in order to identify what worked well and what should be avoided.

This edition focuses on Rural Vision Week, a five-day interactive online conference focused on involving stakeholders with preparations for a long-term vision for the future of EU rural areas.

Rural development stakeholders from across Europe look at the future of their territories and of rural Europe, sharing their views on the role of rural youth, the importance of broadband development and the use of LEADER to support cultural projects.

The highlights report of the 3rd meeting of the ENRD Thematic Group on the European Green Deal and rural areas focuses on the increased production of renewable energy as an element of the clean energy transition in rural areas, and shows how CAP interventions can be used to support and upscale sustainable energy production linked to agriculture and forestry.

The highlights report of the 19th National Rural Networks Meeting focuses on the role of NRNs in supporting and promoting transnational cooperation by LEADER Local Action Groups and their future role in promoting also cross-border cooperation of EIP-AGRI Operational Groups.

This factsheet from the ENRD Thematic Group on the European Green Deal and rural areas suggests how Member States could support the transition to clean energy in the agriculture and forestry sectors through the choices they make in designing and implementing their CAP Strategic Plans, in particular to meet the new CAP’s specific objectives of ‘contributing to climate change mitigation and adaptation and also to sustainable energy’.

In Rural Evaluation Issue Number 18 from the Evaluation Helpdesk you can discover articles on topics such as: improving evidence-based evaluations in preparation for the ex post evaluation; what do the Green Deal Targets mean for CAP Strategic Plans as well as the 15th Good Practice Workshop: 'Assessing the contribution of RDPs to a competitive and viable agricultural sector'. You can expand your knowledge of how to adapt the design of evaluations in times of COVID-19 with a series of questions to guide decisions for RDP evaluations.

This summary report by the Evaluation Helpdesk describes the progress made by the Member States in implementing the RDP evaluation plans as reported in Chapter 2 of the 2020 Annual Implementation Reports. Explore the summary report!