PADIMA was in Brussels on 27th November 2013 on a Capitalisation event on demographic change with 8 other European projects working on demographic change (CREATOR, CASA, DART, INNOVAge…), organized by the INTERREG IV C JTS. Following the first capitalization exercise last year, a first report integrating some Good practices of all the projects and recommendations was prepared by Roos Galjaard, expert in demographic change. The objective of this second capitalization event was to go deeper in the analysis (collecting data, networking and mutual learning amoung the projects), to validate the findings from the capitalization and to improve the report by integrating new recommendations and good practices.
A capitalization report on demographic change
The demographic challenge in Europe has increased the last 10 years, facing both ageing and population decline in some cities, rural and mountain areas. These demographic changes have to be fully taken into account in the design of economic strategies.
The analysis report (that you can found here: http://www.interreg4c.eu/good-practices/capitalisation/demographic-change/) is tackling demographic challenge as a cross sectoral theme, which required an integrated approach. At the same time, strategies have to be specific and tailored according to the unique situation of each region. The demographic challenges are divided into 4 sections:
• Education, Lifelong learning and the Labour market
• Economic diversification
• Social and health care services
• Independent living.
Most of the projects have worked primarily with the theme «ageing» and the reason for this choice of theme is that in EU 28% of the population will be over 65 years old in 2020. These “ageing” projects focused on the possibility to get elderly people to stay longer in work, to look at elderly people as consumers and «a market» (silver economy), use of new technology in in the service sector targeted elderly people and independent living.
Padima worked with two of these themes, but “attractiveness” was not mentioned in itself as a theme in the workshop and report. During working group sessions, Padima’s representants Kjell Vaagen from Hedmark county authority and Marie Clotteau from Euromontana insisted on the necessity to focus on attractively not only for elderly people, but also for young, women, entrepreneurs, visitors… They also insisted on the specificities of mountain and in general rural areas in comparison of urban areas. Even if some challenges could be similar in urban and rural areas, the solutions provided are generally really different and these specificities have to be taken into account in the final capitalization report on demographic change.
Following this event, the analysis report will be updated in the following months to have a final version in June 2014. A third capitalisation event will be organised in May / June 2014.
Smart Specialization strategy: a way to tackle demographic challenge?
Pia Laurila from DG regio made a presentation on the concept of Smart Specialisation Strategy (S3) and Anna Torellini from Marche region presented a concrete example on how demographic change can be taken into account in the Smart Specialisation Strategy. All European regions have to finalise the definition of their own S3 in the following weeks, so demographic change can still be integrated on it.
Dissemination of Good Practices: one movie from PADIMA!
In addition, during this event, the Interreg secretariat mentioned 4 videos they produced so far, showing good practices: one of them is from Padima and show how Dalarna is implementing the Ornica good practice from Italy. Please click here and enjoy the video
To have access to all the presentations, please click here and go on the demographic change folder.
9 December 2013