Coop4RURALGov

Rural Proofing, Cooperation for better governance with a rural approach, will foster inter-regional cooperation and exchange between 7 public and private organisations from Spain, Estonia, Ireland and Bulgaria to improve their governance' capacities for co-design and to make the regional impact assessment, Rural Proofing, a routine part of the decision-making process of officials and policies, programmes and initiatives approved by legislative bodies in sparsely populated rural, coastal and mountain areas (hereinafter referred to as rural areas).

Legislation is often made with urban centres in mind, simply because more people live there and because that is also where the centres of power are centralised. This legislation is sometimes discriminatory and does not take rural territories into account. Sectorial, incoherent and inefficient policies are generated, which continue to be carried out from a distance, without knowledge of the territory and without adaptation to the needs, resources and capacities of rural areas.

To this end, the project proposes collaborative work and the exchange of experiences between the different project partners to improve their public bodies governance processes by taking advantage of new forms of social innovation that allow the creation of a toolbox (Rural Proofing) adapted to each region that reviews the impact on rural areas of legislation, sectorial, social and economic policies and that proposes a SMART and innovative methodology that allows the systematic review of relevant policies with a rural approach from the start of the policy-making process.

In this way the project will contribute to reducing regional inequalities in each country and guaranteeing the rights of citizens living in rural areas, thus contributing to redressing economic, social, security and territorial disparities.