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The Committee of the regions has recently published a brochure entitled “The need for a White Paper on Rurality from local and regional perspectives”.  The brochure is one of a growing number of publications and uploads now available on the CoR website page relating to the “Cork+ 20” event earlier in the year. http://cor.europa.eu/en/events/Pages/cork-20-conference.aspx

The sixteen-page booklet includes a contribution from PURPLE President Helyn Clack.

PURPLE had been asked to be part of this exercise as one of three European networks closely involved in the debate to date. Mrs Clack has taken the opportunity to reaffirm PURPLE’s conviction that any crude rural-urban dichotomy inadequately captures reality and she goes on to point out that “a White Paper on Rurality and an EU Rural Agenda … would serve as a strong signal that the challenges faced by rural areas of all kinds (including peri-urban territories) must also be taken into account at EU level”.

The brochure sets out a range of views from different actors. CoR themselves are firmly in favour of a White Paper as the brochure’s title would suggest. Others in favour of a specific instrument to highlight the importance of rural areas across Europe prefer to talk of a Rural Agenda and gives some clues as to how, for example, from within the European Parliament Rural Intergroup, they plan to make that happen.

Other contributors – Agriculture and Rural Development Commissioner , Phil Hogan, and a DG Regio representative - come out against further fragmentation of policy and instruments in this way and prefer to take a broader and multi-agency approach perhaps by addressing the issue within considerations about CAP more broadly post 2020, or as part of the overall 2020+ Cohesion Policy reform measures.

Also within the brochure is an analysis of where Structural Funds money actually goes in terms of territory types. – it sees the inequality here as an exacerbating factor in increasing the gap between urban and rural growth rates. In fairness it should be pointed out that the contributor from DG Regio disputes the validity of the figures as well as the approach. This is clearly a debate that will continue over the forthcoming months and form at least a part of ongoing developments and discussions in 2017 as work looking towards 2020 and onwards continues.