---
id: ch3-overview
type: spine
title: "Nine pilots, nine Regional Action Plans"
readingTime: 3
standalone: true
core: true
teaser: "From a border county in Ulster to the islands of Malta and Gozo: where PoliRural+ tests its methods on real rural-urban problems."
voice: universal
parent: null
diagram: diagram-pilot-map
recallQ: "What does each PoliRural+ pilot produce, and why does the project run nine different pilots instead of one?"
recallA: "Each pilot co-designs a Regional Action Plan with local stakeholders, summarised in a policy brief, and tests PoliRural+ tools and open-call projects on its own rural-urban challenge. Nine territories with different themes show which approaches recur and can transfer, and which stay local."
highlights:
  - "Nine pilots in ten countries: the Czech-Bavarian pilot crosses a border; eight pilots continue from the H2020 project PoliRural"
  - "Every pilot drafted a Regional Action Plan and published a policy brief (D7.3, annexes 1–9, 11 June 2025)"
  - "Seven of the nine policy briefs recommend a new hub; five recommend strengthening the farm advisory system (AKIS)"
  - "Open calls brought outside teams into the pilots in four steps: Outreach, Mobilise, Develop, Enhance"
status: accepted
concept: pilot-network
conceptTitle: "The network of nine pilots"
parents: regional-action-plan
lang: en
lens: generic
depth: standard
formalism: none
visuality: balanced
lengthBand: standard
genre: explainer
state: core
carriers: prose|table|diagram
---

PoliRural+ tests its methods in **nine rural pilot regions**, each led by a local partner. Eight of the nine continue from the H2020 project PoliRural. The network covers ten countries because one pilot straddles the Czech-German border.

| Pilot | Country | Territory | Theme | Lead (other partners) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [County Monaghan](#c/monaghan-pilot) | Ireland | Rural border county in Ulster | Circular economy, community energy | MID (MAC) |
| [Slovakia](#c/slovakia-pilot) | Slovakia | The whole country | Vision for More Attractive Rural Areas 2040, cross-sector governance | SUA (SRY) |
| [Central Greece](#c/greece-pilot) | Greece | Region of Central Greece | Smart farming, digital skills in AKIS, agritourism | AUA (GAIA, NP) |
| [Apulia](#c/apulia-pilot) | Italy | Apulia (Puglia) | Short food supply chains | TIN |
| [Mallusjoki](#c/mallusjoki-pilot) | Finland | Village in Orimattila, Päijät-Häme | Rural event industry ecosystem | MYA (SML) |
| [Czech-Bavarian border](#c/czech-bavarian-pilot) | Czechia, Germany | Klatovy district, Šumava and Bavarian Forest | Cross-border rural innovation, Technology Campus model | P4A (DIT) |
| [Sierra y Mancha Conquense](#c/cuenca-pilot) | Spain | ADESIMAN territory around Segóbriga, Cuenca | Cultural heritage as a development driver | SINNO (P4A) |
| [Vidzeme](#c/vidzeme-pilot) | Latvia | Vidzeme Planning Region | Monitoring regional development | VPR |
| [Malta and Gozo](#c/malta-pilot) | Malta | Both main islands | Digital and entrepreneurial skills in agriculture | AL |

## One cycle, nine contents

Every pilot runs the same cycle. Local stakeholders first chose themes: D5.1 records, for example, that Monaghan weighed green-economy entrepreneurship, sustainable tourism and dairy innovation before choosing the green economy. Each pilot then drafted a [Regional Action Plan](#c/regional-action-plan) (RAP), and on 11 June 2025 all nine published a policy brief as annexes to Policy Brief No. 1. Technical pilots, such as the Story Pathways editor in Mallusjoki, test specific tools alongside.

[Open calls](#c/open-calls) brought outside teams in: **Outreach** studies (up to €5,000 per project), **Mobilise** hackathons and ideathons (up to €10,000), **Develop** projects building place-based digital applications (up to €100,000) and **Enhance** projects improving PoliRural+ tools (up to €25,000). Several of them, such as DIPS and LocalLinks.AI in the Czech-Bavarian region, worked with the project's [JackDaw](#c/jackdaw) tool on local data.

## Why nine, not one

The spread lets the project tell general patterns from local ones. Scale runs from one village (Mallusjoki) to a whole country (Slovakia), themes from waste-to-resource systems to regional indicators. Yet some answers recur: **seven of the nine briefs recommend a new hub** (Monaghan, Slovakia, Central Greece, Apulia, Mallusjoki, Klatovy, Sierra y Mancha Conquense), and five recommend strengthening the Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation System (AKIS). D7.4 maps each pilot's expected exploitable results across five spheres, from societal to policy making. The nine pilot blocks below share one frame, so they can be read side by side.

**Sources:**
- PoliRural+ public fact sheet (Grant Agreement 101136910, as on CORDIS): pilots, partners and open-call caps. [poliruralplus.eu](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/)
- D5.1 Prepared pilot by Stakeholder Multi-Actor Approach, §2 "PoliRuralPlus Pilots' Themes". [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/150/D5.1_Prepared_pilot_by_Stakeholder_Multi-Actor_Approach_v1.0.pdf)
- D7.3 Policy Brief No. 1, Annexes 1–9. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/349/D7.3_Policy_Brief_No.1.pdf)
- D7.4 Exploitation plans and business models, edition 1, §3 "Pilots' Results". [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/342/D7.4_Exploitation_plans__business_models_edition_1_v1.pdf)
- D6.3 Comprehensive Report on Funded Activities and Impact Assessment. [PDF](https://www.poliruralplus.eu/docs/437/D6.3_Comprehensive_report.pdf)