Welcome and attractiveness policies and territorial cohesion
Over 56% of the European population lives in rural areas, which cover 91% of the EU territory. One of the pillars of European funding is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). European primary sector becomes increasingly competitive. But the inhabitants of rural areas are not all farmers, they are also the people who live services, shops within the rural villages that are affected by constant problems of decline and population aging, difficulty of accessibility, impoverishment of the local economy. Under the development in key thematic for the programme MED area, Philoxeniaplus partners have faced challenges in developing these practices of attractiveness of rural areas by implementing welcoming policies managed by the inhabitants themselves (thematics of local and territorial governance), use of GIS portals specific to each village to fight their isolation (thematic of knowledge and technology), promotion of endogenous resources of the rural territory to promote tourism (thematics of local economy and land management), creating small craft enterprises especially in services (revitalization and diversification of rural areas). The project Philoxeniaplus can be considered as a mini-cluster within the Axis 4 of the MED program as it aims to capitalize, to improve by a constant expost evaluation of the best practices from three projects IVB MED: MEDSTRATEGY, INFLOWENCE and PHILOXENIA. Their three Leadpartner (the Italian partner Intermunicipal Consortium Tindari-Nebrodi in Sicily, the Italian partner Eurokom in Calabria and the Greek partner Emloc in Central Macedonia respectively) are associated with some of their previous partners (Anetel in Cyprus, eZavod in Slovenia and the Province of Teruel in Spain) and invited two new French partners: the Collective Ville-Campagne (City-Country) and the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Gers province, holders of recognized best practices developped in other Interreg programmes (IIIB SUDOE, IVC).