Media Partnership – Regional Revitalization: Transformative Power of Investment in Rural and Post-Industrial Areas Across Europe
Euractiv – Amazon
14-05-2024, Euractiv Network Office Boulevard Charlemagne 1, 1041 Brussels
EU funding programmes have played and continue to play a crucial role in promoting the development of rural and marginalised areas. Instruments overlap and their complexity often prevents local actors from addressing urgent needs in a timely manner. Therefore, it is key for the EU to both increase and streamline investment in regional development. Public spending has also the potential to leverage public investment. Moreover, critical challenges to regional development include lack of infrastructure and opportunities, the complexity of regulations and bureaucracy, global competition, as well as top-down approaches from European and national policy-makers.
Opening Remarks
Adam Mouchtar (Special Advisor at the European Parliament – Intergroup on Rural, Mountainous and Remote Areas & Smart Villages)
Main questions: the political power of rural areas; the key importance for local populations to take ownership of their community.
The key point for regional development is putting local populations in the position to take ownership of their community. A political mistake that has frequently been made in the last few decades is talking about rural regions as areas that are necessarily left behind because the focus has to be placed on the centre. Actors like Trump and Erdogan have capitalised from this and built significant political power on the feeling of marginalisation of rural areas. Beyond investing and creating jobs, companies can actually play a crucial role in giving rural populations ownership of their communities. States in turn play a key role in incentivising private investment in rural areas. EU funding programmes also play a role. For instance, the LEADER programme has successfully enabled local communities to organise themselves.
Panel Debate – Transformative Power of Investment in Rural and Post-industrial Areas
- Patricia Franco Jiménez (Regional Minister of Economy, Businesses and Employment of Castilla-La Mancha)
- Mirko Jularic (Head of Department – Economic Affairs at the Representation of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia to the European Union)
- Fred Pattje (Regional Director of Customer Fulfilment for SEU at Amazon)
- Philipp Lausberg (Policy Analyst, European Policy Centre)
Main questions: what is needed to revitalise rural areas? What is the role that policies and political actors can play? Where does the green transition fit in regional development? What are the main challenges for revitalising rural areas?
When it comes to revitalising regional areas the most immediate answer is providing these areas with the same opportunities of urban ones (Franco Jiménez). Renewable energy sources can be a good example of opportunity (Franco Jiménez). More in general, companies need to be incentivized to operate in rural areas, but people living there also need to be supported (Franco Jiménez). Investing in rural areas is crucial, but so is understanding the setting where you are intervening and becoming part of the community (Pattje). Public investment and industrial policies are needed to revitalise rural areas, only after private investment will follow (Lausberg). In fact, policy incentives can effectively develop energy and transport infrastructure, digital connectivity and telecommunications (Lausberg). When it comes to North Rhine-Westphalia, public investment from the state and the EU (Cohesion Fund, Just Transition Fund) have strongly contributed to develop the region, but also to leverage private investment (Jularic). Nevertheless, a credible industrial policy is needed to keep up and maintain the role of a successful economic area (Jularic).
Policies can be effective in promoting regional development: regulations are crucial to facilitate private investment in less populated areas (Franco Jiménez). The role of political actors is not limited to creating opportunities or jobs, but should be centred on contributing to the community, as an ongoing relationship (Pattje). Key incentives can be provided to private enterprises to operate in a specific region, such as space to do that, infrastructures around it, labour pool; whereas companies need to gain knowledge of the area where they are investing (Pattje). EU funding instruments can potentially play an important role but they often overlap and are hard to apply; there is a clear need for more streamlined, consistent and more effective instruments (Lausberg). Particularly, compared to other regions, the EU lacks the power to scale (strengthen enterprises to make them competitive at the global level) and channel public funds into strategic sectors (Lausberg).
The green transition offers important opportunities for regional development (Lausberg). Massive capacities are needed to re-industrialise rural areas, but perhaps the green transition provides an effective window of opportunity (Lausberg). For instance, renewable energies have shifted investment opportunities to a new field and have been attracting more and more interest from major investors, that’s precisely where rural areas can gain more relevance (Franco Jiménez). When it comes to investing in the green transition, demography and space-based approaches play a role in investment decisions, this could provide opportunities for rural areas (Jularic). It is worth noting that it is not just about greenfield investment but also brownfield ones (Franco Jiménez). While brownfield projects are generally associated with urban areas, they are increasingly emerging in rural areas in the Castilla-La Mancha region and this is also key for regional revitalisation (Franco Jiménez).
Many challenges come from the international sphere and competition with Chinese, US and other enterprises, and this is why the EU should do more strategic investment (Lausberg). There is the urgent need to come up with a new paradigm, a new strategic plan, deploy more resources and use them in a more efficient way (Lausberg). The crucial challenge is to ensure economic activity in these areas, as well as provide infrastructure and development programmes (Pattje). Besides increasing public investment, an important challenge is to increase the involvement of regions (within the Recovery and Resilience Facility for example) bureaucracy should also be streamlined (Jularic). The most crucial things to do are streamlining the complex regulations, acting quicker, giving more attention to regional agendas and developing industrial strategies that promote SMEs (Franco Jiménez)
Closing Remarks
Matteo Miglietta (Cohesion Alliance manager at the European Committee of the Regions)
Main questions: adopting a bottom-up approach to promote regions’ industrial transition; promoting regional development without increasing regions’ fragility.
The key point is that investing in regional development needs to focus on what the needs of the different regions actually are. When it comes to regional development, a bottom-up approach is crucial. The imperative for the EU Cohesion policy has long been bridging the gap between less and more developed regions. The focus of the Cohesion policy is now working on industrial transition. Regional development has also been often promoted through trans-regional organisations centred on a specific sector, like the automotive one. However, this carries the risk that a whole region depends on just one big factory to uphold its wealth, thereby making some areas very fragile. There is hence the crucial need to change how we think about industrial transition. Generally, when policy-makers talk about industrial sectors they consider them in a vertical way, but it is crucial to focus the attention on the bottom, where the transition actually starts.
Networking
Eleftherios Stavropoulos (Project Officer for Territorial Development at the Joint Research Centre). The planned follow-up is to stay in touch via email concerning potential partnerships for forthcoming calls for proposals in different fields.
Adam Mouchtar (Special Advisor at the European Parliament – Intergroup on Rural, Mountainous and Remote Areas & Smart Villages).
Niccolò Mazzocchetti (Junior Communication and Project Officer at European Chemical Regions Network).
