On 12 October, the second GRANULAR General Assembly was held online. The meeting took place one year exactly after the project’s kick-off and was an opportunity to look back at GRANULAR’s achievements and next steps for the upcoming months.
GRANULAR’s results
Results and key achievements have been a key focus of the GRANULAR General Assembly. The “Scoping Report on European Rural Policies”, the “Screening of Rural Data Sources” report and the “Synthesis Report on Multi-Spatial Understanding of Rural Diversity and Policy Notions Framework” were among the outputs delivered by GRANULAR experts since the project’s start. Additionally, the floor was also given to present the Digital Platform, GRANULAR’s open-access repository for exploring existing and newly sourced novel data and indicators on rural areas, and its Knowledge Transfer Accelerator, a virtual platform to enhance peer-to-peer learning for rural development.
Next steps
Over the next six months, the project will keep working on developing its set of indicators, tools and datasets for rural development. These will be applied to the priorities of the 7 GRANULAR Living Labs. Further, the project will be working on defining guidelines for rural proofing and identifying a case study to apply them to a concrete proposal of legislation. To learn more about the upcoming reports of the project, please explore the list of GRANULAR’s results and their timeline and sign up for our newsletter.
Aligning GRANULAR’s results to EU policy cycle
As Tristan Berchoux emphasized, the GRANULAR project is perfectly aligned with the policy timeline, in particular the EU’s Long-Term Vision for Rural Areas. Data and ongoing research could bring significant contributions to the EU’s Rural Observatory and its discussion on Rural Proofing at the European level. This was further underlined by representatives from EU institutions attending the meeting, who emphasized the importance of the work done by GRANULAR’s partners until today.
