The network of nine pilots

From a border county in Ulster to the islands of Malta and Gozo: where PoliRural+ tests its methods on real rural-urban problems.

What does each PoliRural+ pilot produce, and why does the project run nine different pilots instead of one?

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.

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

Open in the interactive book · missions, mini-games and memory cards there

Map of Europe with the nine rural pilots of PoliRural+: County Monaghan (Ireland), Slovakia, Central Greece, Apulia (Italy), Mallusjoki (Finland), the Czech-Bavarian border around Klatovy, Sierra y Mancha Conquense (Spain), Vidzeme (Latvia) and Malta and Gozo. Each pilot writes and tests a Regional Action Plan on its own rural-urban theme.

Nine pilots, nine Regional Action Plans

main tellingdepth: standard3 min markdown

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	Ireland	Rural border county in Ulster	Circular economy, community energy	MID (MAC)
Slovakia	Slovakia	The whole country	Vision for More Attractive Rural Areas 2040, cross-sector governance	SUA (SRY)
Central Greece	Greece	Region of Central Greece	Smart farming, digital skills in AKIS, agritourism	AUA (GAIA, NP)
Apulia	Italy	Apulia (Puglia)	Short food supply chains	TIN
Mallusjoki	Finland	Village in Orimattila, Päijät-Häme	Rural event industry ecosystem	MYA (SML)
Czech-Bavarian border	Czechia, Germany	Klatovy district, Šumava and Bavarian Forest	Cross-border rural innovation, Technology Campus model	P4A (DIT)
Sierra y Mancha Conquense	Spain	ADESIMAN territory around Segóbriga, Cuenca	Cultural heritage as a development driver	SINNO (P4A)
Vidzeme	Latvia	Vidzeme Planning Region	Monitoring regional development	VPR
Malta and Gozo	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 (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 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 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.

Check yourself: Which pilot would you learn from first?

You advise a regional development agency outside the PoliRural+ network. It has a seven-year development programme, but municipalities report different indicators, statistics stop at the regional level, and no one can say whether the programme’s actions move the region forward. You have budget for one first step borrowed from a pilot.

A) Build the platform: an AI-driven, geospatial monitoring dashboard Commission the kind of system Vidzeme proposes as VPR PATHWATCH, and let the data follow.

B) Requirements first: a needs study, then an indicator hackathon with municipalities Follow Vidzeme’s sequence: define what monitoring must do, agree a shared indicator set, then standardise data-sharing.

C) Open an innovation hub, modelled on the Klatovy proposal Bring municipalities, firms and researchers under one roof to coordinate development.

D) Run a national-style visioning process, like Slovakia’s Vision 2040 Rebuild consensus on long-term goals through participatory consultations.

Choose one, then read why it works or where it breaks.

Feedback on each option

A) Tempting, and it is where Vidzeme wants to arrive: its RAP proposes VPR PATHWATCH by 2028. But the Vidzeme brief traces the problem to fragmented data, inconsistent indicators and weak municipal capacity. A platform built on top of those problems displays them faster. The platform is the end point of the route, not the start.
B) The strongest first step. Vidzeme faced exactly this gap and set requirements before building anything: an Outreach study (desk research and interviews) defined what a monitoring system must do, then a two-phase hackathon with almost 50 experts and municipal staff produced a first indicator set. Data-sharing agreements and staff training follow; the platform comes last.
C) Wrong problem. The Klatovy hub answers a different gap, rural firms and farmers far from research and business support. It is also still a proposal, to be institutionalised through a planned MoU and Steering Committee. A hub can coordinate actors, but it does not tell you whether a programme is working.
D) Useful later, but it does not answer the question asked. Slovakia's Vision 2040 and its consultations address silos and a shared direction, and they did win policy uptake. Your region already has a programme; what it lacks is evidence on progress. Visioning without indicators leaves the same blind spot.

Play

Which Pilot Is It? — Nine challenges and plans, nine regions: match each one to its pilot.

Builds on: Regional Action Plans (RAPs)
Leads to: The County Monaghan pilot
Leads to: The Slovak pilot
Leads to: The Central Greece pilot
Leads to: The Apulia pilot
Leads to: The Mallusjoki pilot
Leads to: The Czech-Bavarian pilot
Leads to: The Sierra y Mancha Conquense pilot
Leads to: The Vidzeme pilot
Leads to: The Malta and Gozo pilot
Leads to: The multi-actor approach
Leads to: Atlas of best practices