Declining, Ageing and Regional Transformation
Declining, Ageing and Regional Transformation (DART), demographic and economic change is a great challenge for about 30% of EU regions and this amount will increase up to 50% in 2030. Until 2030 every 3rd person in the EU will be 60+. Together with the low fertility rate and the outflow of human capital the regional effects are a declining population density with great difficulties in ensuring the provision of adequate public services. At the same time, the shrinking regional demand and lack of qualified staff endangers the economic basis of the regions.
But there are several experiences in the different European regions to avoid the downward spiral. There is a need to outline those experiences, to underpin them with adapted standards and indicators and to work out innovative and integrated solutions that maintain the quality of life and social inclusion in declining and ageing areas for all generations and adapt regional policies and public services.
Presenting the “vulnerability index” report in Dec. 2008 Commissioner Hübner itemized the influence of demographic trends as one of the four biggest challenges facing Europe. So meeting the demographic challenge with fortification of human capital (education, lifelong learning) and maintaining public services (health care, social and technical infrastructure) are key factors in regional policies as well as in the Lisbon strategy, the EU initiative “Regions for economic change” and “Regions 2020”.

Within the DART regions there are several projects dealing with special fields of policy. But most of them focus on sector-specific and are only insular solutions. The purpose of DART is to achieve an adjustment of policies relating to demographic change by implementation of
* good practices from previous partner projects,
* new products and services to maintain the quality of life, especially in new business fields for SME and
* a set of standards and indicators to benchmark regions.
DART develops an integrated approach for policy recommendations
- to raise awareness about demographic change 
- to increase knowledge of outflow-inflow motivation of working-age people,
- to adapt standards and indicators for public services, to measure the critical point of public services and to measure success in declining and ageing regions
- to sample innovative solutions to maintain the quality of life for all generations no matter, if they live in an booming or in a declining region.
For regional authorities and stakeholders in sparsely populated areas a well educated population and a sufficient equipment with public services are the focal points for social inclusion, stability and welfare. The downwards spiral can be turned into an upwards spiral, when the shared knowledge becomes effective practice and when the need to react on demographic change is mainstreamed in regional policies. Then life cycle proof neighbourhood can be proved even in declining and ageing regions.