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PURPLE Secretary General, Vincent O'Connell, was one of a panel of speakers at this year's edition of Agri Travel Expo. Other panellists included Herbert DORFMANN MEP, Maria Gafo Gómez-Zamalloa from DG AGRI plus representatives from both COPA-COGECA and ELARD, the event being moderated by the European Forum for Rural Tourism.

O'Connell  was invited to share thoughts from a peri-urban perspective on the session topic "Round table on future CAP: A VISION FOR RURAL AREAS". Drawing in part upon his experiences over the previous days as a member of the ENRD Thematic Group on the Long Term Vision for Rural Areas (LTVRA), and in part also on past PURPLE work on the future of CAP and from its work in the ROBUST project.

As well as explaining the key aims and purpose of the PURPLE network, Vincent focused primarily on the sorts of visioning and forecasting exercises that it is possible to do, largely in the context of planning Covid recovery, but also in light of longer term policy framework tools such as the European Green Deal, the LTVRA and CAP Reform. He outlined possible scenarios where the importance and contribution of peri-urban areas as bridging points between rural and urban interests and actors might be greater than ever before.

During a moderated QandA session, O'Connell also outlined a number of considerations with regard to the governance of CAP National Plans, to the nature of urban-rural relationships post-pandemic and on the mixed impacts that new ways of working utiilising digital technology might have on different groups of people, on different economic sectors and on different types of territories post-Covid,