Alba County Council, Romania is one of 14 partners of the international project ENSURE, which stands for European Network for the Cohesion and Solidarity in Rural Areas. The partners representing local and regional authorities, federations of public bodies, a University, and Civil Society Organizations come from the European Union, Serbia and Montenegro. The project Leader is the Development Information Center Slovenska Bistrica, Slovenia.

The ENSURE project serves to increase the relevance of policy makers as actors addressing needs of rural citizens in the context of EU policies and European citizenship. In a time where citizens’ confidence in the EU decision making is at an all-time low, and especially the support from rural citizens is rapidly declining, this project aims to understand Euroscepticism, and then to build European approach by making use of available EU democracy tools, as well as by providing new engaging instruments for citizens.

The project addresses day-to-day issues which are prevalent for rural citizens, such as: local development, cross-border mobility of agricultural workers, food security, local action groups, community-led local development, etc. By bringing up issues that acquire great interest among rural citizens, this project can hit such questions as: the decline of support of the EU, Euroscepticism and the EU citizenship on rural areas. The long-term outcome could be a lasting partnership as a ENSURE Network.

There are planned 6 international ENSURE Events that will take place in Greece, Spain, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. Each partner will then organise a follow-up local action in their country addressed to local people of all ages, on topics like rural development, rights and obligations of EU citizens, volunteering in Europe, impact of EU policies at local level, etc. The project results will be delivered to over 1600 participants directly and to min. 50.000 indirectly.

A brochure was created to show the diversity that builds up the ENSURE Network. It will follow a Webinar and a final publication available and open for everyone interested. The project is co-financed by the European Union, Europe for Citizens Programme and is implemented between July 2017 and July 2019.

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