No matter how much effort is spent on education, promotion of tourism, development of new economic initiatives, accessibility remains a key to success for any development initiative. The absence of good accessibility and connectivity affects any development strategy implemented in rural territories.
Flagship: Develop sustainable multimodal mobility and digital mobility services
Improving existing transport connections is a key priority for rural areas. To this end, sustainable multimodal mobility solutions and connections should be optimised, making use of digitalisation. The Barcelona Declaration on “Mobility for people: advancing social and territorial cohesion” adopted in September 2023 recognises the importance of sustainable rural mobility needs as well as the need to increase investments in road infrastructure and public transport systems.
Building on its experience with urban mobility networks, the Commission is supporting the SMARTA-NET project aiming to create a network of rural municipalities discussing and identifying mobility solutions they can replicate and follows the two successful preceding projects. The project will organise its final conference in Autumn 2024.
Discover the actions from previous SMARTA 1&2 projects on rural shared mobility.
The Commission tabled the revision of Delegated Regulation on EU-wide multimodal travel information service, as part of the Passenger Mobility Package on 29 November 2023. The initiative aims to support the development of digital multimodal mobility services which will facilitate access to information, payment and booking of all mobility offers available on a territory.
In addition, on 30 November 2023 the Commission adopted a Directive to set up a framework for the sharing of data that will help digitalising data on all bus stops.
Flagship: Rural Digital Futures
This flagship fosters the digital transformation of rural areas by:
1. Seeking to improve digital connectivity: closing the gaps between rural and urban areas and enabling universal and affordable access to high-speed connectivity using private-sector investments through complementary funding from national and EU funds including the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) and the, Connecting Europe Facility (see results of the former call on 5G communities). Overall EUR 23.5 billion have been made available to improve connectivity in areas that are underserved by the market.
2. Supporting the development of digital technology: digital innovation and new technologies contribute to the development of rural areas, through in particular Horizon Europe and Digital Europe Programme funding.
See the calls for proposals still open for submission in 2024.
3. Promoting the improvement of digital skills and entrepreneurship to benefit from digital transition, through the European social fund, the European agricultural fund for rural development and other European programmes.
Watch the June 2023 Rural Pact good practice webinar “Strengthening digital skills of rural people to benefit from the digital era” highlighting the various funding opportunities in the European Digital Education action plan 2021-2027.
Discover the findings of the project “Learning from the extremes” (LfE) addressing inequalities of access to digital education and the pilot schools which benefited from it.
4. Providing indicators to measure progress towards the targets of the digital decade and the closing of the digital gap between urban and rural areas.
Bridging urban and rural through the EU Urban Mobility Framework
The new EU Urban Mobility Framework was adopted on 14 December 2021.
The Framework includes specific actions to better integrate the urban, peri-urban and rural linkages in upgraded Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs), adopted in March 2023 as part of the Commission Recommendation on national SUMP support programme.
Rolling out of broadband in rural areas
A new and strengthened support facility has been launched on 26 September 2022 to support the network of broadband competency offices setup at national and regional level (BCO network).
More about the Broadband competency office network.
Further promoting the digitalisation of the agricultural sector
The CAP, Horizon Europe and the Digital Europe Programme are key instruments supporting the digitalisation of agriculture through trainings, advice, innovation, investment among other actions.
Main lines of action are:
- Digitalisation strategies as part of the common agricultural policy strategic plans,
- Actions under the European innovation partnership for agriculture on digital agriculture,
- Large-scale pilot projects under Horizon 2020 (IOF2020 – Internet and food farming 2020, DEMETER, ATLAS and SmartAgriHubs),
- Research and Innovation on digitalisation of agriculture under Horizon Europe, including dedicated calls related to the use of data technologies and drones in agriculture in Cluster 4 (Digital, industry, space) and Cluster 6 (Food, bioeconomy, natural resources, agriculture and the environment), or the Horizon Europe partnership on “Agriculture of Data”,
- Digital innovation hubs, testing and experimentation facilities for artificial intelligence in agri-food and the common European agriculture data space under the Digital Europe Programme.
The Commission will take into account R&I priorities concerning digitalisation for agriculture and rural areas identified in EU AgriResearch Conference 2023 when drafting the future calls for projects for 2025-2027.
Enhancing rural areas accessibility through the use of drones
The Drone Strategy 2.0 adopted on 29 November 2022 involves all parties concerned at local, regional and national levels to make sure that safe and secure drone operations are deployed, both in urban and rural areas in a fair and sustainable manner.
In addition to utility services (field inspections and measurements), drones can improve accessibility in remote rural areas, e.g. with the delivery of small goods.
More about the Drone Strategy: Creating a large-scale European drone market