News

Details are beginning to emerge of the proposed Long Term Vision for Rural Areas (LTVRA), announced last year as a part of the European Green Deal (EGD) package. Envisaged as a strategic vision of what rural areas of Europe are likely to look like in twenty years time – how they should operate in 2040 (“rural 2040” is an emerging term) and what needs to happen to ensure that this happens.

It is to be developed across multiple EC Directorate Generals with a leading role for DG Agri under the coordination of DG Demographics and Democracy and all tied to the broader EGD remit of Executive Vice-President Timmermans.

A public consultation is due to take place in autumn 2020 and it is planned that the vision will emerge next February/March in the form of an EC Communication.

PURPLE is beginning to feed into this work as part of its ongoing role as member of the Steering Group of the European Network for Rural Development (ENRD), and will be looking to ensure that the role, value, and potential of the peri-urban is recognised as part of this vision which must of course be based on a genuine understanding on the interdependencies between territories of different types.

Anyone interested in learning more about PURPLE’s work in this area is invited to contact: info@purple-eu.org

The General Assembly - and related events -  due to take place in Frankfurt this June has been postponed until 2021.  

The General Assembly meeting itself goes ahead virtually. The draft agenda, minutes of the previous meeting and the draft PURPLE Work Plan 2020-22 have already been shared with member regions and further papers wil be uploaded to the members area of the website soon.

PURPLE has recently been participating in the Voices of Culture project whose report "The role of culture in non-urban areas of the European Union" was presented to European Commission officials in late April.

The first chapter "THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN RURAL, PERI-URBAN, IN-BETWEEN AND/OR UN(DER)USED NON-URBAN AREAS" has been written by PURPLE Secretary General and contains a series of twenty five reccommendations for policy makers.

The virtual meeting that was convened to mark the presentation of the paper was attended by representatives of the 40+ organisations who were selected to take part in the Dialogue Group as well as representatuves from DG EAC, DG AGRI and DG REGIO.

PURPLE regretfully announces the cancellation of its 32nd General Assembly - scheduled to take place in Frankfurt on June 16 and 17 2020 - due to the continuing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plans were well-advanced with devising a programme comprising a seminar, study visits, accompanied tours and the GA itself when it became apparent that continuing restrictions on movement and travel made this an impractical exercise.

We have waited as long as we felt prudent in making this decision in order to give the event every possible chance of going ahead if at all possible; we will now organise an online meeting on June 16 in order to take care of the formal business elements of the agenda.

There is some excellent and positive news to share at the same time in that Frankfurt have already stated their intention to invite all PURPLE member regions to join them next year when we hold our first General Assembly of 2021.

The first eight editions of the PURPLE Newsflash have appeared over the last four months. All eight editions are now archived and available for download from the Members' area of this website.

By way of a reminder - the NEWSFLASH  is designed to be a short information bullletin for members of the PURPLE Lobby Group. 

The 32nd PURPLE General Assembly will take place in Frankfurt on Tuesday June 16th. It will form part of a larger programme of activities to take place over June 16 and 17 generously hosted by our colleagues from the Regionalverband, FankfurtRheinMain.

Further details regarding the full programme event and registration details will appear shortly.