Rozvoj venkova

The EESC and the European Rural Parliament (“the voice of rural people in Europe”) are organising this public hearing to explore ways to achieve sustainability and prosperity through new ways of cooperation between rural and urban areas.

On 9 November 2016 the EESC and CoR organised a conference on balanced territorial development entitled "Cork+20: leaving rural areas behind is no longer an option". At stake was the European Commission's new rural development strategy, which would normally have to be inspired by the new Cork 2.0 Declaration that has been co-signed by stakeholders at the Cork conference on 5-6 September 2016.

Now is the time to put the Cork 2.0 Declaration into action.

The EESC opinion is the organized civil society's contribution to the follow-up of the Conference. At the public hearing on 3 May we  discussed concrete actions for implementing the measures of the declaration. The trend towards a systematic prioritarization of urban areas across the whole set of EU sectoral policies must be reversed!

The first Cork Declaration, adopted on 9 November 1996, forthrightly requested "a fairer balance" of public spending and investments between rural and urban areas. In the new Cork 2.0 Declaration adopted on 6 September 2016, there is only one concrete proposal with the potential to have a meaningful impact: the so called "rural proofing" whose aim would be to "systematically review other macro and sectorial policies through a rural lens".

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