ENRD Main Stories Archives

HIGHLIGHT OF THE MONTH: Success factors for next generation Rural Development Programmes

Successful Programming’ seminar organised by the ENRD in December 2012 explored the design of Rural Development Programmes (RDPs) for the next EAFRD programming period (2014-2020). The seminar brought together over 250 delegates from all EU Member States - including representatives of Managing Authorities, Paying Agencies and the European Commission.

Speaking at the event, Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner Dacian Ciolos gave a clear indication of the path ahead, “we need to make RDPs that can easily report on verifiable results, be better targeted towards rural territories’ real development needs and properly integrated with all other funding. RDP programmers should also place a very high priority on reducing errors.”

Issues such as globalisation, fiscal austerity and environmental sustainability provide a challenging context for the next generation of RDPs which are expected to make a major contribution to EU targets concerning employment, climate change, and cohesion.

The next programming period will be characterised by greater integration between EU policies for rural areas, which means that the new rural development framework requires a strong coordination process.

The seminar concluded that Member States’ future RDPs should be: demand-led; results-oriented; error-free; and fully integrated with other development support for rural areas. An official ENRD newsletter summarising the key insights from the Successful Programming seminar has been produced, including the outcomes of the workshops on hot topics such as Community-Led Local Development (CLLD), good governance and knowledge transfer and innovation.

Commissioner Ciolos also highlighted the need to prepare all aspects of rural development policy - from the definition of the strategic objectives to the definition of programmes and implementation procedures - in advance.

The seminar acted as a springboard for the European rural development community as RDP preparations begin in earnest and it brought together a number of different workstreams the ENRD has been leading, such as strategic programming and monitoring and evaluation, Community-Led Local Development, the future of rural networking and financial instruments.

Member States across Europe are already busy preparing their future RDPs with some of the rural networks involved in stakeholder consultations. The ENRD will continue to support rural development programmers during what will be a formative year for the future of rural development in Europe.

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