Three days of intense work have just put an end to the European Rural Youth Parliament (ERYP) where 70 young people from 15 European countries have highlighted the main needs they detect from their experience in order to stay in rural areas creating business opportunities and life options.
Five issues have been identified by the young people on whom they have worked and on which they have drawn their conclusions to include in the Declaration of Candás to be completed in the European Rural Parliament (ERP).
The first is to facilitate opportunities for diverse economic activities, sustainable agriculture and food production, broadband infrastructure and transport, accessibility and quality of public services, and civic engagement and political awareness.
As the coordinator of ERYP and Latvian Rural Forum, Artis Krists Mednis, pointed out, “new technologies are essential to create new business opportunities such as remote working (teleworking), together with quality public services and a good education that makes the rural environment more attractive and makes it easier for young people to stay in it”.
The different national delegations, most of them from Eastern Europe and the Balkans, were able to get to know a little more about the business initiatives carried out in Asturias, specifically in Carreño, by young people who have applied for aid such as the Leader funds and were very surprised by the modernisation and diversification of the Asturian countryside. One of the initiatives that caught their attention the most was the robotization of the milking of a farm of milk cows in the case of the delegation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who say that there is nothing similar in their country.
In fact, the Bosnian delegation, made up of nine people, travelled in Candás in two cars, travelling more than 2,000 kilometres in a two-day journey that has allowed them to discover new territories.
Last Monday both the ERYP coordinator and the ERP coordinator, Vanessa Halhead, were received at the General Assembly of the Principality of Asturias by its president Marcelino Marcos Líndez and the Chamber Bureau. There they were introduced to the programs of both Parliaments. If the director of the Asturian Youth Institute, Clara Sierra Caballero, participated in the inauguration, the president of the Asturian Parliament himself made the honours of closing the meeting of the young people together with the Delegate of the Government of Spain in Asturias, Delia Losa, on today’s day, hours before the start of the reception of the participants of the ERP.
Both stressed the importance of young people with their skills, energy and ideas, to revitalize the countryside, to fix population and create new opportunities, aware of the importance of listening to them to create “the real rural agenda of Europe”.
A total of 18 participants of the Youth will also take part in the subsequent meeting to be held between 6 and 9 November, with an attendance of about 400 people from 38 countries.
The project “The best is yet to come. Youth create tomorrows’ rural reality from village to wider Europe” isfinanced with the support of European Commission’s “Erasmus+: Youth in Action” administered in Latvia by the Agency for International Programs for Youth. This publication reflects only the author’s views, and theCommission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.