Southern Regional Assembly RSES LowRes

Europe and Our Rural Region

The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine’s €4bn Rural Development Programme 2014-20, funded under CAP, aims to: • Enhance the competitiveness of agriculture through on-farm investment; • To ensure the sustainable management of natural resources and climate action; • To achieve balanced regional development of rural economies and communities. Pillar I of the Policy provides for a ‘greening’ payment for farmers following a specified set of farm practices that yield additional environmental benefits. Pillar II consists of measures to enhance the competitiveness of the agri-food sector, achieve more sustainable management of natural resources and ensure balanced development of rural areas, with a focus on delivering positive environmental outcomes including for water and climate change.

The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) supports the opportunities of the countryside as a growth area, acknowledging that “the diversity of rural areas brings considerable added value and potential for creativity and innovation and this can be turned to even better use.” The CoR has produced a rich array of research to demonstrate rural potential. In addition, EU Programmes offer a resource for potential projects as they encourage Member States to collaborate to share information, costs, results and best practices, and to generate ideas for further areas of cooperation across Europe’s land and maritime borders. These Programmes see wide-ranging investment including, broadband, research and innovation, enterprise supports, sustainable energy, urban regeneration, marine and agricultural innovation. Projects under these Programmes cut across a range of sectors including the marine sector, energy sector, supports for innovative small firms emerging from Incubation Centres, climate action, inter alia. All projects involve partners from regions in other Member States dealing with similar issues. Engaging and participating in European projects will assist in bringing European solutions to meet various needs in our Region. For the period 2021-2027, cohesion policy identifies five ‘’policy objectives’’ of: A Smarter Europe; AGreener, carbon- free Europe; A more Connected Europe; A more Social Europe; and A Europe closer to citizens. The Cork 2.0 Declaration 2016 A Better Life in Rural Areas states the determination “to strengthen the integration of local initiatives and rural capacity building in mainstream EU policy making, in particular through bottom-up approaches to local development such as LEADER and Community-Led Local Development”. A key regional issue is the inter-relationships between urban areas and rural hinterlands. This is of special relevance to our Region with three cities and strong network of towns closely associated with strong rural hinterlands. The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) plays a significant role in the development and maintenance of Our rural Region.

RPO 43

Rural Economy and EU Good Practices It is an objective to harness the potential of shared learning and good practice from European Programmesandpolicytoassist rural development.

RPO 44

Common Agriculture Policy It is an objective to ensure the delivery of sustainable actions under theRural Development Programme (RDP) 2014-20andbeyond inpriority areas of innovation, bio-diversity restoration, water and soil management, renewable energy and waste management, carbon conservation and sequestration, diversification, job creation and ICT development in our rural areas.

Southern Regional Assembly | RSES

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