The European Consortium of Innovative Universities presented ‘A Smart Regions Agenda for Europe: A networked university's perspective’ at an event in Brussels on 9 October 2019. This agenda is meant to be a starting point for European rurban-oriented policies driven by digitalisation, motivated by the many opportunities provided by European rurban regions and their importance for European competitiveness.

Many European regions are characterised by a mixture of some tens of municipalities dispersed across a rural environment: “rurban regions”. The differences between the rurban and urban regions can be significant, yet in both cases we see that digitalisation plays an important role in the space of solutions for a myriad of problems, generally leading to the notion of "smartness". The Agenda contains analyses of the opportunities for digitalisation in Europe’s rurban regions, and concrete recommendations to better support smart regional development.

Katja Reppel, (European Commission Deputy Head Of Unit, DG REGIO), Carsten Schierenbeck (European Commission Team Leader Emerging Industries DG GROW), Pirita Lindholm (Director ERRIN) and Margit Noll (Chair of the Management Board, JPI Urban Europe) shared their reflections on the agenda.

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