3.1. Importance of rural areas

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1 3.1. Importance of rural areas CONTEXT 1 - DESIGNATION OF RURAL AREAS A consistent typology of 'predominantly rural', 'intermediate' or 'predominantly urban' regions for EC statistics and reports A new approach based on the population grid Classification of the updated NUTS regions In 2010, the European Commission agreed on a new typology of predominantly rural, intermediate and predominantly urban regions based on a variation of the previously used OECD methodology. The aim of this new typology is to provide a consistent basis for the description of predominantly rural, intermediate and predominantly urban regions in all Commission communications, reports and publications. The classification at NUTS 3 level is widely used in this report to represent data and analysis. This new typology uses a population grid of one square kilometre resolution, which for Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Austria and the Netherlands is based on real census data (see European Forum for GeoStatistics (EFGS), For the remaining Member States, it uses the disaggregation grid (version 5) created by the Joint Research Centre (JRC), based on LAU2 population and CORINE land cover. The method builds on a simple approach to create clusters of urban grid cells with a minimum population density of 300 inhabitants per km² and a minimum population of All the cells outside these urban clusters are considered as rural. This new typology, applied to the NUTS 3 level, successfully addresses two main constraints of the OECD methodology in the EU: the variation in surface area of both LAU2 and NUTS 3 regions and the presence of some city centres separated from surroundings at NUTS 3 level. It does this in a consistent manner throughout the Union in two main steps: - It groups a NUTS 3 region of less than 500 km² with one or more of its neighbours solely for classification purposes, i.e. all the NUTS 3 regions in a group are classified in the same way. - It classifies NUTS 3 regions based on the share of population in rural grid cells. If more than 5 of the total population lives in rural grid cells, the region is classified as predominantly rural. Regions where between 2 and 5 of the population lives in rural grid cells are considered intermediate, while those with less than 2 in rural grid cells are predominantly urban. Nevertheless, this new typology considers the presence of large urban centres in the same way as the OECD methodology: - a "predominantly rural" region (or group of regions) is re-classified as "intermediate" if there is an urban centre > inhabitants representing no less than 25% of the regional population; - an "intermediate" region (or group of regions) is re-classified as "predominantly urban" if there is an urban centre > inhabitants representing no less than 25% of the regional population. In the beginning of 2012 the methodology will be applied to classify the updated version of NUTS regions (Commission Regulation (EU) No 31/2011 of 17 January 2011 amending annexes to Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics). At the same time an improved version of the population grid will be used. See also: 39

2 Map Urban-rural typology of NUTS 3 regions 40

3 CONTEXT 2: IMPORTANCE OF RURAL AREAS Predominantly rural regions generate 17% of GVA and 22% of employment and these shares are substantially higher in the EU-12 than in the EU-15 Predominantly rural regions in the EU represent 57% of the territory and 24% of the population. In 2008, they generated 17% of total GVA and 22% of employment. The share of predominantly rural regions in the territory is approximately equal in the EU-15 and in the EU-12 (56% and 58%, respectively). However, the share of predominantly rural regions in terms of population, GVA and employment is higher in the EU-12 than in the EU-15. In the EU-12, % of the population live in predominantly rural regions, compared to 19% in the EU-15. The share of predominantly rural regions in GVA and employment of the EU-12 is 29% and 37% of the total, respectively; while in the EU-15 these shares are substantially lower (16% for GVA and 18% for employment). Graph Importance of rural areas in the EU-27, Graph Importance of rural areas in the EU-15,

4 Graph Importance of rural areas in the EU-12, Predominantly rural regions represent 73% of the population in around 5 in Estonia 6 of the economic activity in around 4 in Denmark and 68% of employment in around 4 in Hungary Predominantly rural regions represent more than 8 of the territory in Ireland, Portugal, Finland and Estonia. By contrast, only 2% of the Netherlands is classified as predominantly rural. The share of the population in predominantly rural regions is highest in Ireland (73%), Slovakia (5) and Estonia (48%). Less than 1% of the population in the Netherlands, 3% in the United Kingdom and 9% of the population in Belgium live in predominantly rural regions. Most economic activity, measured in terms of the share of GVA, takes place in predominantly urban areas, especially in Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, where less than 6% of the economic activity is based in predominantly rural regions. The predominantly rural regions of Ireland, Denmark generate 6, 4 and 39% respectively of total economic activity. As for employment, the predominantly rural regions of Ireland (68%), Slovakia (44%), and Hungary (43%) reached the highest shares. The lowest shares can be found in the Netherlands (1%), the United Kingdom (3%) and Belgium (7%). 42

5 Table Importance of rural areas NUTS 3 Context 2 - Importance of rural areas - NUTS Country % PR % IR % PU % PR % IR % PU % PR % IR % PU % PR % IR % PU Belgium Bulgaria Czech Republic Denmark Germany Estonia Ireland Greece Spain France Italy Cyprus Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Hungary Malta Netherlands Austria Poland GISCO Portugal Romania Slovenia Slovakia Finland Sweden United Kingdom EU EU EU Baseline indicator for context Measurement of the indicator Definition of the indicator Subdivision Unit of measurement Source 2 - Importance of rural areas This indicator consists in 4 sub-indicators: - % territory in rural areas - % population in rural areas - % Gross Value Added in rural areas - % employment in rural areas This context indicator consists in several sub-indicators giving the relative importance of rural areas. The following aspects are taken into account: Rural area as a percentage of the total area People living in rural areas as a percentage of the total population GVA in rural areas as a percentage of the total GVA in a region/country Employment in rural areas as a percentage of the total employment in a region/country For each sub-indicator the breakdown according to the rural/urban character used for context related baseline indicator n 1 "Designation of rural areas" should be provided. With OECD methodology, the breakdown is : - % in the predominantly rural areas - % in the intermediate region areas - % in the predominantly urban areas % Rurality according to the definition of Rural Areas as agreed by the European Commission (2010) Other variables: Eurostat 43