Rural development from policy to politics. National strategic plans and their potential impact on social structural transformations. Comparative overview. Case study Romania between the European and national context

The question of rural development is of utmost for countries such as Romania. In the current climate of tension generated by the post-pandemic recovery and geopolitical turmoil, rural development has been more important than ever. We are living in a time of great structural duress and the solutions are becoming more political as the effects of the policy are political ones. There is a transformation of the policy into politics as the Common Agricultural Policy and the Rural Development policy by any other name would still be politics. In this context, the flexibilization provided by the National Strategic Plan is more than welcome. The purpose of the paper is to analyse how the policy elements from CAP are turning into politics and are influencing the Member States politics. As the CAP post- 2020 unfolded new tools such as the National Strategic Plan were added to the EC toolbox, but often their design was influenced by national specificities. The paper performs a desk review analysis of the existing sources and has a case study the way in which this process unfolded in Romania. What is of importance in all that time-consuming process is the fact that for the first time we witnessed a large-scale reflection process throughout the European Union member states. It was partially favoured by the COVID-19 pandemic which put everything on hold for a couple of months. That combined with the need to reform made everything more democratic and more advanced and reformist than the initial proposals.

Challenges and opportunities for a sustainable agriculture in the context of the green and digital twin transition. How can we increase the resilience of the agriculture in the current context?

The climate changes and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic most recently have generated an increase interest and support for the topic of agricultural resilience. First of all the European Union Member States have discovered that the current pandemic has generated immense troubles in both the supply chains (that were often over extended and vulnerable) and the supply of the population inside the EU. This only added to the troubles generated already by climate changes (draughts, water shortages, extreme climate variations, etc.) All these acted like a wakeup call for the policy makers and other stakeholders. We have started to realise that we need to build up a resilient agricultural system that can sustain all the citizens involved. This resilience building process is a very complex and requires a lot of transversal actions and a whole-of-society approach. What is it needed? First of all we should innovate and train the farmers. Secondly we should developed the local and national infrastructure needed for agriculture. The use of financial instruments and institutional mechanisms are also needed to support the farmers. All these measure should be taken only after a thorough research process that draws a map of the realities in place, of the upcoming challenges and of the measures needed to solve them.