Socio-economic and Demographic Trends in EU Rural Areas: An

Indicator-based Assessment with LUISA Territorial Modelling

Platform

Carolina Perpiña Castillo, Chris Jacobs-Crisioni, Boyan Kavalov and Carlo Lavalle

European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Directorate B -Growth and Innovation,

Territorial Development Unit (B3) Via Enrico Fermi 2749I-21027 Ispra (VA), Italy

Carlo.Lavalle@ec.europa.eu

Keywords: Territorial Modelling, Rural Areas, Indicators, Population, Agriculture, Land Abandonment.

Abstract: This work presents an application of the LUISA Territorial modelling platform under the last released

Territorial Reference Scenario 2017. It provides a broad overview of the situation of EU regions from a socio-

economic and demographic point of view with special focus on rural areas. In particular, five indicators were

selected, developed and analysed to better understand current and future spatial patterns and trends with regard

to the rural population, agricultural production systems, agricultural land abandonment, employment and

GVA (Gross Value Added) in the primary sector. The relevant indicators were developed, implemented and

mapped at different level of aggregation (European, national and regional/local) from 2015 to 2030.

Differences and disparities between regions are, then, further analyzed, emphasizing the situation of

predominantly rural regions.

1 INTRODUCTION

Rural areas are very diverse across Europe due to

various geographic, socio-economic and

environmental particularities. Natural and

mountainous zones, rural landscapes, biodiversity

richness, predominant agricultural or forest-related

land uses, abundant natural resources, cultural

traditions and important recreational functions, along

with moderate economic and demographic

development are among the principal characteristics

associated with rural areas.

The economic development of rural regions relies

primarily on local natural resources, environment

quality, and quality of life. The economic growth in

rural regions is mainly due to new activities from the

secondary and tertiary sector such as tourism, food

production, business services, transport and

technology. Primary sector activities typically serve

as a platform for other diversification activities and

employment relies partially on the diversity of local

activities. Moreover, declines in agricultural

employment produce cascade processes affecting

other branches of industry with immediate losses of

jobs and economic decay. Agricultural

intensification, often driven by market forces, leads to

high productivity on more fertile areas with the

consequent marginalisation or abandonment in less

fertile ones. Land abandonment is furthermore

directly linked to population dynamics, especially in

mountainous or remote rural areas, where ageing and

the lack of economic and social opportunities leads to

their decline (Hart et al., 2013; Eurostat, 2013).

During the last decade, all the mentioned aspects

related to Europe‘s rural areas have been at the core

of the European Union (EU) policy debate due to the

importance of rural regions and the different

directions of development that they can take. For a

meaningful debate, understanding of the future of EU

past and future agricultural trends is necessary. The

GIS-based LUISA modelling framework developed

by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre

is specifically developed to inform such policy

debates. In this context, this study will present results

from LUISA, focusing on key rural and agricultural

trends in an analysis of socio-economic and

demographic characteristics in Europe’s rural

regions.

250

Castillo, C., Jacobs-Crisioni, C., Kavalov, B. and Lavalle, C.

Socio-economic and Demographic Trends in EU Rural Areas: An Indicator-based Assessment with LUISA Territorial Modelling Platform.

DOI: 10.5220/0007739902500258

In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Geographical Information Systems Theory, Applications and Management (GISTAM 2019), pages 250-258

ISBN: 978-989-758-371-1

2 MODELLING AND ASSESSING

EU RURAL AREAS IN LUISA

This section briefly introduces the main tool used for

this analysis, namely the LUISA Territorial

Modelling Platform. Furthermore, the selected

indicators (rural population, employment and GVA in

primary sector, agricultural land and agricultural land

abandonment) are presented, highlighting the most

important data sources and methods needed to

performed the analysis.

2.1 LUISA Territorial Modelling

Platform

The LUISA provides EU-wide scenarios of territorial

development in order to understand the direct and

indirect impacts of EU policies in an integrated,

spatially explicit manner. The LUISA platform

consists of several elements that: 1) provide

multisectoral regional trends and derived demands for

land functions; 2) allocate those demands as land

uses, population counts and accessibility levels on a

100x100m spatial raster, typically until 2050; 3)

compute a large amount of indicators based on the

resulting LUISA projections; and 4) provide web

platforms to share the computed results. For that

purpose, LUISA coherently links specialised

macroeconomic, demographic and geospatial models

with thematic spatial databases. Under this modelling

approach, LUISA aims to explain the causal link

between economic decisions and resulting spatial

patterns of human land-based activities. Further

relevant for this paper are the sources of regional

demographic and agricultural expectations. For this

study, regional population projections were obtained

from Eurostat (the EUROPOP13 scenario) and

regional agricultural projections were derived from

the CAPRI 2016 Baseline projections. The latter are

allocated by LUISA in aggregate production systems,

with imposed additional degrees of freedom to allow

for the effects of land market competition with other

land uses not modelled in CAPRI

CAPRI is a partial equilibrium model that simulates

market dynamics of agricultural commodities for impact

assessment of the Common Agricultural Policy (Britz and

Witzke, 2012). The spatial patterns of agricultural activities

are simulated by the mentioned agricultural production

2.2 Developing Socio-economic and

Demographic Rural Indicators:

Data and Methods

2.2.1 EU Rural Population

The indicator presents the people living in rural areas

as a percentage of total population and the changes in

rural population between 2015 and 2030 at national

and regional level (NUTS3

) for all EU Member

States (MSs). The regional demographic projections

are produced by Eurostat (EUROPOP2013) and, later

on, implemented in the LUISA platform (Jacobs-

Chrisioni et al., 2017). These projections are then

dynamically allocated at a finer resolution in a 100m

grid map for each time step throughout the simulation

period (2015-2030). The identification of rural areas

is based on the degree of urbanization (Dijkstra, L.

and Poelman, H., 2014), according to which three

main classes are distinguished: cities (densely

populated areas), towns and suburbs (Intermediate

density areas) and rural areas (thinly populated area).

2.2.2 Employment and Gross Value Added

(GVA) in Primary Sector

Added Historical data of the EU Employment and

GVA in primary sector are used to understand past

economic trends up to the last observed year 2015.

Thus, the two selected indicators measure:

 the share of employment in primary sector relative

to total employment. Primary sector employment

is defined as employment in the NACE A branch

(Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing). The indicator

shows historical trends at European, national and

regional level (NUTS 3) derived from the

Cambridge econometric database

 the sectoral economic productivity in the primary

sector in terms of GVA, relative to total regional

GVA. Agricultural GVA is measured as NACE A

productivity, and obtained from the Cambridge

econometric database at regional level (NUTS 3).

2.2.3 Agricultural Land

This indicator provides the share of land occupied by

agriculture and the percentage of changes between the

years 2015 and 2030. In function of its final

production, two categories are distinguished: 1) the

systems as a result of an aggregation process from the

individual crops provided by CAPRI.

Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics at level 3.

Cambridge Econometrics’ European Regional Database

(ERD), Revision: 25/07/2017

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251

production of food and feed takes place on land

allocated to the following modelled production

systems: arable farming, pastoral systems, mix-crop

systems, livestock production, permanent crops and

rice production, and 2) the production of energy from

agricultural land correspond to the modelled class of

bioenergy crops (Perpiña et al., 2015). The indicator

presents data for future projection from LUISA, at

national and regional level (NUTS3) for all EU28

Member States.

2.2.4 Agricultural Land Abandonment

Agricultural land abandonment indicator represents

the share of the agricultural abandoned land with

regard to the total agricultural land area (ALA) for the

period 2015-2030 at the national, regional and grid

level for all 28 EU member states. LUISA models

agricultural land abandonment explicitly using

regional expectations of abandonment along with a

dynamic composite map that assesses the local

potential risk of farmland abandonment. Local risks

are defined according to regional characteristics such

as biophysical, agri-economic’s, farm structure,

remoteness and population density.

The dynamic composite indicator is built by the

spatial aggregation of the set of factors shown in

Table 1. Selected factors driving an agricultural land

abandonment Table 1, as an adaptation of different

methodologies from the scientific literature (Benayas

et al., 2007; Pointereau et al., 2008; Eliasson, et al.,

2010; Terres et al., 2014; Lasanta et al., 2016). These

factors are selected to reflect a number of criteria that

drives and influence an abandonment process from

different points of view.

Each criterion corresponds to a spatial thematic

layer or statistical information (at NUTS2/3 level)

from different European data sources. The spatial

aggregation is made by using a weighted linear

addition (WLA) where biophysical factors are

assigned the highest weights following the

assumption that abandonment can be initially

triggered by primary drivers related to remote and

mountain regions, along with unfavourable soil and

Soil, climate and terrain criteria are used for classifying

land according to its suitability for generic agricultural

activity. Delimitation of areas facing severe natural

constraints (limiting conditions) follows the last EU

Regulation No 1305/2013 (European Union, 2013). The

spatial layers are mainly gathered from IIASA (International

Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and FAO (Food and

Agricultural Organization of the United Nations), SINFO

project (Soil Information System for the MARS Crop Yield

Forecasting System), ESDB (European Soil Data base)

and EFSA (European Food Safety Authority, Spatial Data).

climate conditions for agriculture. Finally, the spatial

combination of the three maps for each group allows

to build the dynamic risk map of farmland

abandonment for the whole Europe (Figure 6).

Table 1: Selected factors driving and agricultural land

abandonment process.

Biophysical land

suitability

factors

Economic and

structural

agricultural factors

Population

and regional

context

Length of

growing period

Farmer

qualification

Population

density

Organic matter

Age of farmers

Remote areas

Soil texture

Farm size

Root depth

Rent paid

Soil ph

Rented UAA

Salinity and

sodicity

Farm income

Precipitation

Farm investment

Soil drainage

Farm scheme

Slope

3 RESULTS: FACTS AND

TRENDS IN EU RURAL AREAS

(2015 - 2030)

3.1 EU Rural Population Trends

(2015 – 2030)

Rural areas cover 75% (3.3 million km2) of EU’s

total populated land area, but in 2015 hosted only

28% of the total population, as the great majority of

Europeans live in towns, cities or suburbs. The

implicit concentration of people is expected to

continue. By 2030 the EU population, 510 million, is

projected to grow by around 2%, while the EU’s rural

population roughly 0.6% between 2015 and 2030.

Important differences can, however, be found at

national and regional level. Six countries (Germany,

Spain, France, Italy, Poland and the United Kingdom)

account for about 70% of the total EU population in

2015. Rural population accounts for about 40% or

This information is mainly gathered from FADN (Farm

Accountancy Data Network) and DG EUROSTAT -FSS

(Farm Structure Survey) to reflect the stability, viability and

performing for preventing farmland abandonment at

regional level.

The risk of abandonment increases in mountain areas with

extreme remoteness, physical disadvantage and very low

population density (MacDonald et al., 2000). In this study

population density below 50 inhabitants/km2 is considered

low populated areas and remote areas are identify as those

that are further than 60 minutes away from towns.

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more in a number of countries such as Austria,

Croatia, Ireland, Romania, Poland, Slovenia,

Slovakia, Finland, Czech Republic and France. In

contrast, rural population is particularly low (below

15%) in Malta, the Netherlands and the United

Kingdom. As presented in Figure 1, the EU Member

States will undergo significant, but not equal changes

both in general and by population categories up to

2030. The largest growth in rural population is

projected for the United Kingdom, Spain, Denmark

and Sweden. Conversely, the Baltic region (Lithuania

and Latvia) as well as in Bulgaria will see the deepest

drop (more than 7%) in their rural population between

2015 and 2030.

Figure 1: Percentage of changes in population in cities,

towns and suburbs and rural areas at MS level between

2015 and 2030.

The average rural population at NUTS3 level is

approximately 100.000 inhabitants, with the

majority of rural regions in having a population of

less than 300,000 inhabitants (Figure 2). The share

of regional rural population is substantially higher in

Eastern Europe regions compared to Western

Europe. By 2030 important changes (>10%) in rural

population across NUTS 3 regions are expected such

as in: Southern and North-eastern parts of Spain;

South-eastern part of Sweden, Finland, Belgium and

United Kingdom; Northern part of Italy and Poland;

and around most capital cities (Bucharest, Budapest,

Dublin, Madrid, Prague, Rome, etc.), as well as in

Cyprus. Conversely, deep (>10%) cuts in rural

population are expected in: Northern Portugal,

Eastern parts of Germany and Hungary, and large

areas in Sweden, Croatia, Greece and Romania, as

well as in the already identified Lithuania, Latvia and

Bulgaria.

Shares derived from DataM bioeconomy data https://datam.j

rc.ec.europa.eu/datam/mashup/BIOECONOMICS/index.html

Figure 2: a) Population living in rural areas in 2015, b)

Change of rural population between 2015 and 2030.

3.2 Employment in Primary Sector,

2015

By 2015, the share of primary sector in the EU overall

employment was 4.4% (more than 9.5 million

people). Agriculture accounted for 93% of that

employment

. The employment in primary sector is

substantially higher in the newer EU-13 than in the

elder EU-15 (12% versus 3%, respectively). Romania

and Bulgaria had by far the highest shares (27% and

19%, respectively) followed by Greece and Poland

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with around 12% each, and Portugal with 10%. On

the other side, Belgium, Germany, Malta and the

United Kingdom contribute with less than 2% share,

as well as Luxembourg with the absolute low EU-

wide of less than 1%.

Figure 3: Share of employment in primary sector per degree

of urbanization at NUTS 3 level in 2015.

By regional typologies, rural areas provided the

largest number of employees accounting for about 4.8

million (11.5% share in primary sector employment).

With almost 4% share, towns & suburbs ranked

second and close to the EU average, while cities had

the lowest share of primary sector employment (less

than 1%). Eastern European regions in Lithuania,

Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Croatia as

well as in Portugal were the ones where the

employment share of primary sector exceeded 20%

(Figure 3). Town & suburban regions with such a

high share were mainly found in South-eastern

Europe (Romania, Bulgaria and Greece). On the

contrary, most NUTS 3 containing capital cities or

other large cities, as well as vast areas in Western and

Central Europe (in Germany, Southern United

Kingdom, Benelux, Northern France and French

Riviera, Northern Italy, Czech Republic, etc.)

presented very low shares of primary sector

employment ( less than 2.5%). In all those regions,

employment in secondary and tertiary sectors were

the dominant.

3.3 Gross Value Added in Primary

Sector, 2015

In 2015, primary sector accounted for just 1.7% of

total GVA in the EU. Similarly to the primary sector

employment, the weight of rural economy differed

considerably between the newer EU-13 and the elder

EU-15. The share of primary sector’s GVA in EU-13

was roughly two times higher than in EU-15 (8.1%

versus 4.1%, respectively means that the productivity

of labour force in EU-13 was much lower than the one

in EU-15. In the same way as employment, Romania

was the EU leader in primary sector GVA with 5.7%

followed by Greece (4.8%), (4.6%) and Bulgaria

(4%). At the bottom of the GVA ranking there was no

significant difference with the employment one.

Germany, the United Kingdom and Belgium

occupied the lowest placing with less than 1%, going

down to the record low of 0.25% in Luxembourg.

Figure 4: Share of GVA in primary sector per degree of

urbanization at NUTS 3 level in 2015.

In predominantly rural regions, the primary sector’s

GVA contributed well above the EU average (1.7%),

accounting for roughly 4.5% whereas in towns &

suburbs was considerably lower (only 2%). The

activities of primary sector were mainly concentrated

in rural regions of Austria, Croatia, Estonia, Finland,

France, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Romania and

Slovenia. In Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany,

Denmark, Hungary, Italy and Sweden the GVA of

primary sector came simultaneously from towns &

suburbs and rural regions. The highest EU values

(above 25%) were identified in Romania (Brăila and

Ialomiţa) and Bulgaria (Silistra) and, modestly, most of

the regions of the Eastern and Southern Europe

(Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Greece)

reached more than 15% share. Conversely, many

regions in Italy, France, Belgium, the Netherlands,

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Germany and Poland scarcely contributes (below

2.5%) to the GVA in primary sector. However, even in

those countries was possible to identify NUTS 3 with

higher importance of this sector (5% - 10 %),

particularly in traditional rural zones. The regional

heterogeneity is highlighted by the large differences

amongst rural-urban typologies, for instance in Spain

or Bulgaria.

3.4 Agricultural Land (2015 – 2030)

The total agricultural land area (ALA) reached 185

million ha (42.6% of the all EU land area) in 2015 and

it is expected to decrease 1.1% between 2015 and

2030. By aggregated production systems, arable

farming systems8 cover the largest proportion of EU

agriculture systems with 103.4 million ha (56% over

the total ALA) in 2030, despite an important reduction

of more than 4%. The second largest contributor to

agriculture systems are livestock grazing systems

which account for 47 million ha (25% over the total

ALA) in 2030, also being expected to undergo a drop

of 2.6%. Mixed crop-livestock systems

are the

agriculture system projected to experience the largest

increase (almost 11%), with a total land surface of 25

million ha representing 13.5% of the total ALA in

2030. Besides of mixed-crop, permanent crops

systems

are also expected to increase by

approximately 3.5%, with a total cultivated are of 10.2

million ha (5.5% over the total ALA). Regarding

different types of permanent crop systems, olive trees

will represent practically double of the combined land

surface of fruit trees and vineyards, being the

production system expected to grow the most (13.3%).

Bioenergy crops are likely to occupy a small area of

0.21 million ha, i.e. only to 0.12% of the total ALA in

2030. Though abandoned agricultural land is not

considered here as productive land, it must be

highlighted that more than 5 million ha will be

abandoned in EU in 2030.

The analysis of the ALA at MS level indicates that

seven countries (France, Spain, Germany, Poland,

Italy, Romania and United Kingdom) contribute the

most to the EU total ALA in 2030, accounting for

about 70% (128.6 million ha). Slight increases (<5%)

are projected for France, Spain, Cyprus, Portugal,

Greece, Malta, Croatia, and Latvia. In relative terms

(agricultural land as share of total area), Denmark,

Hungary and Ireland are the clear EU leaders, with

Arable farming is the result of adding arable land and rice

production in the same group.

Livestock grazing system is the result of adding pastures,

agro-forestry and natural grassland in the same group.

more than 60% of their surface being occupied by

agricultural land both in 2015 and 2030. Conversely,

Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, Austria and Estonia are the

group of countries with the least land devoted to food,

feed and energy production in the EU.

Figure 5: Share (top) and percentage of changes (botton) in

agricultural land for the production of food, feed and energy

land over the total land at NUTS3 level, 2015 -2030.

Mixed-crop system is the result of adding annual crops

associated with permanent crops, complex cultivation

patterns.

Permanent crops system is the result of adding vineyards,

Fruit and olive trees in the same group.

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Within some countries (e.g. Italy, France, Spain or

Portugal) is possible to find NUTS3 regions ranging

from shares less than 5% to greater than 75%, while

other MSs are more homogeneous (e.g. Finland, the

Netherlands, Denmark, Slovakia, Estonia or Latvia).A

number of regions located in the southern and eastern

part of Romania, north of France and Germany,

southern parts of Hungary, The United Kingdom, Italy

and Portugal have the highest shares, above 75% of the

total land. Future trends projects that only a small

number of NUTS3 regions of a few countries will

continue expanding their agricultural lands. This is the

case of central France and Spain, western part of

Croatia, Greece, Romania, Latvia, Denmark, north of

Finland and Sweden. Conversely, more than 75% of all

NUTS3 regions in Europe will undergo a contraction

of land for the production of food, feed and energy

between 2015 and 2030.

3.5 Agricultural Land Abandonment

3.5.1 European Risk Map of Agricultural

Land Abandonment

In 2030, almost 183 million ha of agricultural land are

projected to be under various potential risk of land

abandonment. Particularly, almost 75% (roughly 138

million ha) of all EU agricultural land is expected to be

subjected to very low and low risk of abandonment,

while about 14% (27 million ha) will be under a

moderate risk. More than 11% (21 million ha) will be,

however, exposed to high and very high risk, primarily

in Romania, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Cyprus, Spain,

Portugal and France (Figure 6).

Table 2: Classification of the abandonment risk in 2030.

EU -ALA

V.L.R.

L.R.

M.R.

H.R.

V.H.R.

Million ha

0.7

Percentage

25.7

14.2

0.4

Note: V.L.R. refers to Very Low Risk; L.R. refers to Low

Risk; M.R. refers to Moderate Risk; H.R. refers to High Risk;

V.H.R. refers to Very High Risk

The biophysical component is the leading one in large parts

of Austria, Poland, Greece, Spain, Estonia and Latvia,

northern parts of Sweden, Finland, Italy, Ireland and the

United Kingdom, as well as in southern parts of France and

Bulgaria due to mountain ranges (the Apennines, Pyrenees,

Alps, Dolomites, Carpathians, etc.) which provide

unfavourable terrain and climate conditions. Abandonment

risk due to climate limitations is mostly found in the

Mediterranean countries where soils suffer from drought

(Greece, Italy, Spain), but also in the UK and Scandinavia

(due to acidic and waterlogged soils). In the inner part of

Spain, the middle and northern areas of Sweden, Finland

and Ireland, the northern and eastern parts of Romania, and

partially in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Hungary and

Cyprus, the elevated agricultural abandonment risk is

mainly associated with remoteness and low population

density. Economic and structural farm factors are likely to

be the primary cause for the increased agricultural

abandonment risk in many regions of Spain; the north of

France, Greece and Italy; the central and northern parts of

Sweden and Finland.

Figure 6. Map of the potential risk of agricultural land

abandonment in 2030 at grid level (100-metres resolution)

in the EU. The associated table reports the EU values per

each risk category.

Altogether, those findings mean that although the

potential risk of agricultural land abandonment is

relatively modest at EU level, it may be quite severe in

some EU MSs and in particular (as shown in Figure 5)

in some of their regions, e.g. Southern and Eastern

Romania, Southern and central Spain, South-western

France, etc. The risk is projected only for areas where

the current land use is agriculture, i.e. arable farming

(including rice), livestock grazing, mixed crop-

livestock and permanent crops.

3.5.2 Agricultural Land Abandonment

Projections (2015 – 2030)

In the period 2015-2030 the total agricultural land

abandonment in EU-28 is projected to reach roughly

5.6 million ha (about 373 thousand ha per year on

average), which will account for approximately 3% of

the total agricultural land (183 million ha) in 2030.

Arable land is by far the dominant type of agricultural

land in the EU and consequently, it will also account

for the largest share of abandonment. More than 70%

of EU total abandonment in 2030 will be arable land (4

million ha), followed by pastoral land with more than

20% (1.2 million ha) and permanent crops with

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approximately 7% (400 thousand ha). Almost a quarter

(1.38 million ha) of all agricultural abandonment in the

EU will most likely occur in mountainous areas where

arable land would be again the most affected

agriculture system (974 thousand ha, i.e. 70% of all

mountainous abandonment) due to natural handicaps

and difficult mechanization, among other limitations.

In absolute and relative terms, Spain and Poland are

likely to face both the greatest agricultural land

abandonment (about 1/3 of all EU). France, the United

Kingdom, Germany and Italy complement the list in

the group of the largest affected countries in the EU,

altogether responsible for more than 70% of all ALA

losses. However, Germany and especially France, are

expected to rank below the EU average forecast of 3%.

Conversely, due to their relatively smaller total

agricultural land, the Netherlands, Portugal, Finland,

Greece and especially Slovakia (4.6% loss) are

expected to be above the 3% EU average.

Figure 7: Share of the total agricultural land abandonment

with regard to the total UAA at NUTS3 level in 2030.

Focusing on a regional perspective, figure 7 despicts

the projected abandoned agricultural land as share of

total ALA at NUTS 3. It confirms that Spain is

expected to face the biggest challenges in the EU,

especially in its North / Northwest, where the Lugo

region will be affected the most, with almost 80

thousand ha of abandoned land. Other regions in

Southern Europe, which are likely to face significant

land abandonment, are located in Northern Portugal,

Southeastern France, Sardinia in Italy, and Greece. In

Central and Northern Europe, substantial agricultural

land abandonment is projected for Northern Hungary,

Southeastern Poland, where the largest absolute EU-

wide loss of more than 85 thousand ha occurs in the

Chelmsko-zamojski region, few more NUTS 3 in

Western Germany, as well as in the central and far-

North parts of the United Kingdom. It can be also

highliheted some island regions in Western Austria and

Southern Netherlands with more than 30% share of

agricultural land abandonment, which trend is not

likely to spread to the surrounding regions.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Over the last decades, considerable efforts have been

made to better analyse the EU rural areas due to their

socio-economic and environmental importance. This

work attempts to contribute to the current and extend

knowledge about EU rural regions by means of

presenting a comprehensive analytical exercise on

socio-economic and demographic future trends. For

the purpose of this analysis, a set of indicators (rural

population, employment and Gross Value Added in

primary sector, agricultural land and agricultural land

abandonment) are developed to further extend the

understanding of the situation by 2015 up to 2030 in

predominantly rural areas. The main tool that allow us

to perform a comprehensive and integrated territorial

assessment is the LUISA Modelling Platform

(European Commissions – Joint Research Centre),

and, in particular, its latest 2017 Territorial Reference

Scenario.

The results indicates that throughout the simulation

period (2015 – 2030) the EU total population is

projected to increase by 2%, while the rural population

is expected to rise by just 0.6% (2.8 million). However,

this modest increase will not be uniform across the EU,

with the largest expansion generally located in Eastern

Europe (Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic

and Poland) than in Western side.

Approximately, a quarter of all EU agricultural

land is expected to be subjected to moderate, high or

very high risk of abandonment in 2030. Across Europe,

it can be found NUTS3 regions almost completely

cover by a moderate or high risk, especially in

Mediterranean regions and mountain areas, where a

combination of remoteness, low population density

and unfavourable biophysical conditions are observed.

With this situation, LUISA projects to reach more

than 3% (5.6 million ha) of the total agricultural land

in the EU. This is, however, a noticeable trend,

considering that the decrease of EU agricultural land is

estimated to continue decreasing (about 1.1%

compared to 2015). Per production systems, arable

land is projected to account for the largest share of total

abandoned land, followed by pastures and permanent

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crops. This is in line with the prevailing breakdown of

agricultural land, where arable land is the largest

group, too, while the permanent crops are the smallest

one.

Regarding the EU economic performance in

primary sector, represented by the EU share of

employment and GVA, both confirms the continue

decline of this sector. Romania, Bulgaria followed by

Greece and Poland have the highest shares of

employment and GVA (adding also Estonia) in

primary sector while the lowest rates are found in

Luxembourg, Germany, The United Kingdom and

Belgium. Rural areas provides the largest number of

employees (about 4.8 million) and contributes the most

of the EU’ GVA in primary sector.

This assessment can, therefore, offer valuable

qualitative and quantitative information, as well as

provide useful insights about potential outcomes for

rural areas across the EU. However, the work can even

go beyond by addressing the topic from a broader point

of view (such as the synergies between the rural-urban

relationships or diversification of economic activities)

as well as integrating new rural-related indicators

(accessibility to transport and services, forest and

natural areas, other economic sectors, etc.).

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