The EU agriculture ministers adopted, on Monday 20 November, conclusions on a long-term vision for the EU’s rural areas.
The EU Council welcomed the European Commission’s communication entitled ‘A Long-Term Vision for the EU’s Rural Areas: towards stronger, connected, resilient and prosperous rural areas by 2040”. Not everything must be financed by the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), stressed the agriculture ministers of several countries, including France, Hungary, Lithuania and Poland.
“Cohesion policy must complement the CAP”, said the Polish delegation in particular, which also mentioned the need to provide a mechanism for Ukrainian grain exports.
In its conclusions (https://aeur.eu/f/9n0 ), the EU Council invites the Commission to continue to systematically monitor the implementation of the EU Rural Action Plan, ensuring that it is regularly updated and that all relevant EU policies continue to be mobilised effectively. The EU Council supports the Commission’s implementation of the ‘rural proofing’ concept, which makes it possible to assess the anticipated effects of major EU initiatives on rural areas, and encourages similar approaches at national, regional and local levels in order to ensure the coherence, consistency and complementarity of policies and instruments covering issues of importance to rural areas.
The EU Council also stresses the need to strengthen coherence and synergies between EU policies and instruments, including the CAP and cohesion policy, and to build bridges between public authorities in order to act on economic, social and territorial cohesion in rural areas and combat trends towards depopulation and brain drain.
In a note (https://aeur.eu/f/9m0 ), Italy, supported by France, Austria, Finland, Greece, Latvia, Poland and Romania, referred to measures to ensure the vitality of rural areas. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)