This Special Edition ENRD Newsletter (see attached) provides a highlights summary of the recent Cork 2.0 European Conference on Rural Development and the Cork 2.0 Declaration that resulted.

More than 300 rural development stakeholders met for the Conference in Cork, Ireland, 5-6 September 2016. They participated in four thematic workshops on:

• Jobs, Growth and Investment;
• Rural environment, climate & water;
• Innovation;
• Rural viability and vitality.

Each parallel workshop went through a three-stage process to identify: 1. the main potentials and opportunities under each theme; 2. the main drivers and barriers to making the most of those opportunities; and 3. the emerging recommendations for policy and action.

A drafting committee of experts under the chairmanship of Heino von Meyer (OECD) turned these inputs into a Cork 2.0 Declaration: A Better Life in Rural Areas. This new Declaration comes exactly twenty years since the original Cork Declaration (1996) that laid the ground for Rural Development policy in Europe.