As Thomas Hubert reports, the Cork 2.0 conference on rural development was a worthwhile exercise. A new road map and direction for the Rural Development Programme has been launched. It is an upgrade of the Cork declaration signed in 1996, which paved the way for the European Union’s rural development policy.

It is an opportune time to revisit the RDP and the role it plays in farmers’ and citizens’ lives.

European politicians must now answer these calls by keeping the spirit of the new Cork declaration alive, matching its objectives with appropriate funding and keeping bureaucracy to the minimum as work gets under way to get the next CAP ready for 2020.