Globalisation

In her State of the Union address on 13 September 2023, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen outlined the main priorities and flagship initiatives for the year to come, building on the European Union's successes and achievements of the past years.

Urbanization is changing agrifood systems globally in ways that can only be understood through a rural–urban continuum lens. The changing pattern of population agglomerations across a rural–urban continuum and its interface as a place of exchange and socioeconomic interactions, is reshaping and being reshaped by agrifood systems, with implications for the availability and affordability of healthy diets, and in turn, for food security and nutrition.

Rapid urbanisation in several EU Member States and the ensuing population shift from rural areas towards urban centres are generally treated in economic literature as a necessity for generating growth and wellbeing. In the last two decades, however, the overly positive assessment of this trend has shifted.

Globalisation has put increasing pressure on agriculture, food processing industries and other local cottage and SME enterprises. This has led to accelerating changes in the balance between rural and urban areas and has deeply impacted the overall socio-economic fabric of regions.
At the same time, declining rural populations make many rural communities unsustainable. Once inhabitants decide to leave areas due to falling living standards, the remaining population suffers from the further deprivation of goods and services, driving even more people to leave. Several studies have been assessing the costs associated with these changes, in particular their impact on the viability of rural communities. However, they generally fall short of the holistic assessment required, as the decline and shift of populations also create further negative spillovers on the rest of the economy, for example on urban areas that are usually at the receiving end of the influx of rural populations.
This report aims to contribute to the debate on EU rural development policy by presenting a methodology to understand the net costs and benefits of investing in rural areas to society as a whole. By doing so, it asks whether rural depopulation is just a rural problem or whether the consequences have a bearing on the whole of society, and in particular urban areas.

This foresight study explores possible and necessary changes in the European social and economic systems as the European Union engages in managing sustainability transitions towards 2050. With this focus, the study presents strategic areas of intervention covering a new social contract, governance for sustainability, people and economy, and the global perspective on sustainability. The study reflects on the agency of EU actors (such as government at various levels, business, and communities) to address the strategic areas of intervention as part of collectively addressing sustainability transitions. The study builds on a participatory foresight exercise, which generated four foresight scenarios for a climate-neutral EU in 2050. Based on each scenario, a corresponding transition pathway was co-created and analysed through the process. The study presents and analyses these outputs of the process. The outputs can also serve as input to policymakers and practitioners interested in conducting new participatory exercises on sustainability transitions.