Learn how a LEADER-supported project helped to expand and upgrade the broadband network on the island of Samsø, Denmark, benefitting the local community and increasing the business and tourism appeal of the area.

Discover more good practices related to rural broadband in our Project Database.

The ENRD Contact Point team is happy to announce that the LAG database and its linked CLLD Partner Search tool are now accessible for Local Action Groups (LAGs) to manage themselves.

Each LAG has its own online profile and LAG managers are now able to expand and update the information in it, as well as to create and browse through offers for future CLLD cooperation. If you are a LAG manager, look out for our invite email in your inbox, follow the instructions to sign up and start networking with thousands of LAGs from across Europe.

Help us spread the word! Share our flyer with the LAGs you know – available in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish.

A new edition of the EAFRD Projects Brochure on ‘Resource-Efficient Rural Economies’ is now available on the ENRD website. It showcases examples of Rural Development Programme (RDP) projects supporting sustainable use of natural resources, particularly water and soil.

The projects highlight inspiring practices of creating greater economic and environmental value from fewer inputs and how these are supported under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD). The brochure is part of the broader ENRD thematic work on ‘Resource Efficiency’.

For electronic and paper subscriptions to ENRD publications, please write to subscribe@enrd.eu.

Are you a user of the ENRD website and social media? Please help us to improve our online media tools by filling in our short survey by Monday, 16 April 2018.

The survey takes around 10 minutes to complete and offers an opportunity to give your feedback on how information is presented and disseminated via the ENRD website and social media channels.

Thank you in advance for your input!

The 10^th NRNs’ Meeting (20-21 March 2018 – Neuhardenberg, Brandenburg, Germany) looked at inspirational project examples on three particularly future-oriented topics: rural mobility, smart supply chains and digital villages.

The event included field visits to projects dealing with these topics and discussed the 2018-2019 priorities of the ENRD Contact Point, as well as emerging areas for NRNs to cooperate in clusters across regions and countries. In addition, NRN representatives took part in a simulation game exercise, considering the social, economic and policy effects on rural development planning in rural areas.

The latest meetings of the ENRD Thematic Groups (TGs) on ‘Smart Villages’ and ‘Sustainable Management of Water and Soils' took place on 21 February and 22 March 2018, respectively. Find out what happened at each meeting’s web page.

Look out for the upcoming European Seminars on the two topics, which will bring together a wide range of stakeholders in Brussels, Belgium:

• 22 May 2018: ENRD Seminar on 'Smart Villages';
• 14 June 2018: ENRD Seminar on ‘Sustainable Management of Water and Soils'.

Explore a selection of good practice examples of revitalising rural services such as health, education, energy, and mobility in marginalised rural areas through social innovation in SIMRA’s latest brochure.

The highlighted examples are selected from the project’s database of good practices and contribute to the new concept of ‘Smart Villages’ which is gaining momentum across Europe.

The Finnish Rural Network (Maaseutu.FI) has launched a competition to identify and highlight villages in the country that are actively and smartly working to develop services such as healthcare, education, energy, mobility, and local food, among others.

The competition will be open until the end of 2018 and participants will be offered guidance, ideas, peer support, networking opportunities and visibility both in Finland and beyond.

The fifth meeting of the European Rural Networks’ Assembly Sub-group on LEADER/CLLD (8 March 2018 – Brussels, Belgium) put forward recommendations and priority actions for improving LEADER/CLLD implementation in the current programming period.

The results from the extensive EU-wide survey among Local Action Groups (LAGs) carried out by the ENRD Contact Point in December 2017 provided a solid basis for discussions on implementation priorities. Focusing on what can still be done to boost LEADER/CLLD by 2020, Sub-group members stressed the importance of ‘hearing the voice of LEADER’ by actively highlighting the role it plays in the development of local communities.

Browse through EIP-AGRI’s online resources on Operational Group projects, including a searchable database and an interactive map.

Operational Groups (OGs) are innovative projects bringing together researchers and practitioners to jointly seek practical solutions to current issues facing European farmers and foresters. Find out more in EIP-AGRI’s new brochure showcasing examples of successful collaborations, as well as tools to further inspire networking among OGs.

The EU should be doing more to more to exploit the synergies between its policies on renewable energy sources and rural development, according to the latest report by the European Court of Auditors.

The report reveals that EU Member States do not use Rural Development funding under the EAFRD sufficiently to prioritise renewable energy projects that could have positive impacts on both rural areas’ development and the envirornment. It concludes with a set of recommendations on how to better link renewable energy and rural development policies and tools.

Learn about the new SME initiative under the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD) in a recent publication of the advisory platform fi-compass.

The initiative is intended to boost investments in agriculture and forestry, as well as the rural economy by stimulating finance for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) – farmers and agribusinesses –  through the Rural Development Programmes (RDPs). It is a joint Financial Instrument of the European Commission, European Investment Bank and European Investment Fund.