Rural youth are increasingly seen as crucial actors in addressing the structural challenges that European agriculture currently faces. This study explores agricultural entrepreneurship among young people aged 15 to 30 living in rural areas as a possible route towards resilience and rural revitalisation. Drawing on harmonised microdata from Flash Eurobarometer 513, we combine a territorial comparison with an ordered logistic regression to analyse both sectoral preferences and the individual drivers of agricultural entrepreneurship. The results reveal that rural youth tend to show stronger entrepreneurial aspirations and a more pronounced interest in the agrarian sector than their peers in urban areas or towns. Gender, employment status, and national context emerge as significant determinants of their involvement in agricultural entrepreneurship. Taken together, these findings underline the importance of inclusive and place-sensitive policies capable of enabling rural youth to shape sustainable futures within their own communities.
In recent years, the European Commission has actively promoted the concept of rural resilience (European Commission, 2025), but there are still many divergent views on the operationalisation of the concept at EU, national and local levels. Drawing from quantitative and qualitative evidence (e-survey, 18 semi-structured interviews and four focus groups), from studies based in Ireland, Portugal, Slovenia and EU-wide perspective, we analysed the practitioners’ understanding of rural resilience; and identified key factors and challenges for implementation in practice. Findings reveal that, while rural resilience is a conceptual construct open to multiple interpretations, a clear distinction can be observed between theoretical and practitioner interpretations. Theoretical perspectives tend to adopt a broader, more systematic view of rural resilience, transformative and “bouncing forward” approaches, whereas practitioner interpretations are typically narrower, focusing on robustness, adaptability, context-specific actions and immediate community needs. Our findings have implications for policy formation, highlighting that resilience is a long-term process rather than a fixed outcome.
In the face of demographic change, increasing mobility, institutional transformations, and escalating interstate tensions and conflicts, local communities are exposed to new forms of risk and uncertainty. In this context, perceived safety becomes an important indicator of local resilience. The article aims to identify the dimensions of perceived safety and examine their links to individual characteristics (social capital, local rootedness, civic agency) and the contextual social potential of residents in rural municipalities located in suburban areas. The study is based on a representative survey of adult residents (N = 607), conducted in 2024 in six rural municipalities in the & Lstrok;& oacute;d & zacute; Metropolitan Area. Factor analysis was used to construct a three-component perceived safety index (social, housing, spatial). Subsequently, two-level Generalised Linear Mixed Models and ordinary least squares regression models were estimated. The analysis shows that the perceived safety is moderate. It is strengthened by trust in municipal authorities, pro-newcomer attitudes, place attachment, readiness for co-decision making, and trust in close ties. Age and trust in entrepreneurs are negatively associated with perceived safety. The inter-municipal variance proves statistically nonsignificant, indicating that individual-level social factors are more important than contextual (municipal) factors for local resilience.
This study uses individual mental mapping to examine the risk environment of Hungarian vine growers. While the focus is on the challenges posed by climate change, it is important to note that grape growers do not respond only to climate change but also to the complex environment that surrounds them. This research focuses on the M & aacute;tra wine region and explores how climate change affects market, institutional, financial, and labour market risks. Through qualitative interviews and collaborative mental mapping exercises, this study reveals that producers are confronted with an intricate and interconnected web of risks. Although short-term adaptation practices to the negative effects of climate change are common, long-term strategic responses remain limited. Institutional inflexibility, particularly regarding regulations on grape varieties and support schemes, further restricts their capacity for adaptation.
Floods, as one of the hydrological disasters, have been recorded as the most common within the natural disaster occurrences since 1990. Floods can be induced by natural forces, by heavy or continuous rain that exceeds the assimilative capacity of the soil or the river flow capacity, but they can also be triggered by human activities, deforestation, constructions on unstable slopes and constructions of embankments, which can result in activation of landslide processes on the slopes. Floods affect agricultural areas, areas with forestry, but also urban areas. This research explores flood resilience strategies through the comparative analysis of selected flood events in Europe, which occurred from 2005 until 2025, with the focus on the recent floods in 2024 that affected the rural areas of the southern part of Switzerland and the southern part of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The research is conducted based on documentary evidence about floods, which is compared from an urban planning perspective, including historical data and the recorded floods since the 20th century. The main aim is to explore how planned flood resilience strategies have been applied and the effectiveness of their implementation during the last 20 years of repeated flood impacts, in order to rethink the concept of flood resilience. The research points out the importance of approaching the existing resilience framework from a holistic perspective and understanding that climate adaptation requires flexible and transformative land-use policies in both urban and rural areas, as well as a diversified application of resilience strategies.
