(05 November 2021) – While the health crisis has raised Europeans’ “appetite” for the rural world, the French Senate yesterday adopted a text calling on the European Commission to take better account of rural territories in its policies and “encourage economic recovery through local action”.
More and more French people are turning to the countryside: 92% of them now say they find the rural world “attractive and pleasant to live in”, 20% more than two years ago, before the crisis.
But at the same time, a “feeling of abandonment” persists in this same rural world where the crisis has also highlighted the “inequalities and gaps” between rural and urban areas, particularly in terms of mobility, but also access to healthcare, services and digital technology.
It is from this observation that the request, formulated by French senators around Patrice Joly (SER), to set up a “European rural agenda” was born.
Adopted on Thursday 4 November, the motion for a resolution invites the European Commission “to take better account of rural issues in European public policies and European funds and thus re-establish an equal relationship between urban and rural areas in the implementation of EU policies”. (Euractiv)