Earlier this month, CCRI Research Fellow, Katarina Kubinakova attended the annual European Rural Parliament (ERP) which this year was held in Kielce, Poland from 12th to 15th September 2022.
The ERP has three broad objectives, which are:
- To strengthen the voice of the rural communities of Europe, and to ensure that the interests and well-being of these communities are strongly reflected in national and European policies.
- Promote self-help, common understanding, solidarity, exchange of good practice and cooperation among rural communities
- Enable rural people to play their full role in addressing the great economic and political challenges which are currently affecting Europe.
The four-day event was broken down into a series of study days, networking events, workshops and policy discussions. Katarina was involved in two specific sessions – Polirural H2020:Future oriented collaboration policy development for rural areas and people : measuring the attractiveness of rural areas and Communities and the European Green Deal: Help us design the transformational local development policies of tomorrow.
The latter session was led by Ecolise (the European network of networks for community-led initiatives on climate change and sustainability), which is currently preparing the policy positioning on Localizing the European Green Deal with a focus on empowering communities, leading to transformational regional and local development policies and launching a campaign and a wider EU level consultation. Katarina is part of their Community of Practice on LEADER/CLLD group which is assisting in the process.
Katarina said “the Polirural H2020 methodology which was used was particularly interesting and some of the tools they used and developed will be relevant for our own EU Horizon 2020 project ‘RUSTIK‘”.
The gathering also provided an opportunity to network and meet number of project collaborators and colleagues. ERP meeting concluded with signing the Rural People’s Declaration of Kielce calling on citizens and policymakers at all levels to mobilise resources and people, and ensure policies and programmes are coherent and rural-proofed.
For full details of the ERP, please visit the 2022 website.
