Depopulation unavoidable, higher quality of life in villages essential
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The EU Member States, instead of using their economic resources to counteract depopulation and population aging in agricultural areas, should rather accept that tendency and focus on ensuring that residents have good living conditions, improving the quality of public services, and assisting digital accessibility. These are the conclusions of the June report by the ESPON program.
The authors indicate that the Covid-19 epidemic might unexpectedly lead to a breakthrough in the development of rural areas, as it turned out that many people were perfectly able to carry out their work from home and moved out of the city.
“This can be a good starting point. If this is followed by adequate incentives, particularly in terms of ensuring connectivity and digital accessibility, we will witness new dynamics in rural areas that will weaken the process of depopulation of these regions,” the report emphasizes.
The process of the population shrinking in Europe’s rural areas mainly concerns the former Eastern Bloc countries (including Poland), but also Southern Europe (Portugal, Greece, Spain, South Italy), Germany, and also regions of Sweden and Finland. The main reason for the dwindling population of rural areas is migration to cities, which provide a better standard of living, richer employment opportunities, and better access to public services, as well as attractive cultural events and leisure activities.
ESPON’s experts recommend that central and local government authorities should stop focusing on preventing migration by merely stimulating the economic development of peripheral regions. A better method might be to simply adapt to the unavoidable changes.
